How to Build an Innovative Company

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

You can lead innovation from wherever you are. But you need to know how to setup an innovation capability. This is the innovation model I coached that produced 957% return on the initial investment of $2.47M. I envisioned and coached the process, model, and approach for a global and scalable innovation capability from what I learned leading innovation at Microsoft. Part of what makes innovation so tough is the lack of shared mental models. Here are some of the key components of leading innovation: INNOVATION BOARD An Innovation Board is people working together to manage innovation as a capability. An internal Innovation Board can help you prioritize, get funding, channel resources, and escalate as necessary. It's also a way to integrate innovation back to the core. INNOVATION HUBs An Innovation Hub is a center of gravity for innovation efforts. I like the "Hub" model because it's the idea of Hubs and Spokes. You can have a Hub of Hubs, and it's a way to embed and spread innovation around the world. It's a federated model for innovation. INNOVATION PORTFOLIO Creating a shared view of your innovation projects helps leaders see the dashboard. It gets people thinking in "portfolios" vs. "one offs". An Innovation Portfolio gives you the balcony view to invest better. BUSINESS MODEL INNOVATION This is where you create new value. I learned a lot as head coach for Microsoft Satya Nadella's innovation team, but one of the most important things is to focus on business model innovation. As Satya put it to me: "Bring me new business models!" Just this one shift in focus can completely transform the success of innovation efforts. CULTURE OF INNOVATION You can inspire innovation at multiple levels. Satya asked me to share with him directly stories of innovation and trends & insights. When you share stories of success, smart people want to play, too. And, they have a fear of missing out. Every leader wants growth.  And innovation is the lever. EMPOWERING EMPLOYEES Innovation happens at the edge. It's the intersection of customer pains, needs, and desired outcomes and your solution. Innovation takes empathy. Swarming on customer challenges is where breakthroughs happen. Everyone can innovate, but they need the mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets. DREAM BIG, START SMALL Too many people play small, out of fear and risk. But that sets the stage for failure. Small things don't accrue to any big things unless there's a guiding vision. The vision is the scaffolding for success. And the vision is what will inspire the team and get support. When you dream big, you figure out better solutions. And these constrain your strategies, and that's a good thing. The right answer is Dream Big, Start Small. This way you can work forwards and work backwards. Dream big, start small.

I was fortunate to be a founding member of the innovation lab at PayPal and we learnt a lot along the way! most importantly that cultivating innovation is essential to navigating the digital landscape. It requires a foundational shift in our corporate culture. Here are some ways to build and nurture a workplace that drives digital transformation: - Encourage Curiosity: Promote an environment where questioning and exploring are valued. Innovation begins with curiosity. - Invest in Resources: Equip your teams with the necessary tools and continuous learning opportunities to turn innovative ideas into reality. - Normalize Risk-Taking: Support a culture where calculated risks are encouraged, and learning from failures is as celebrated as achieving success. - Enhance Collaboration: Encourage diverse teams to work together, leveraging different perspectives to ignite creative solutions. - Demonstrate Commitment: As leaders, our actions must reflect our innovative values—showing commitment through active participation and support. - Acknowledge Creativity: Regularly recognize and reward creative efforts to motivate sustained innovation across the organization. - Build Networks: Stay engaged with industry leaders and outside thinkers to bring fresh insights and practices into our fold. Fostering a culture of innovation is a commitment to continuous growth and adaptability. #DigitalTransformation #Innovation #BusinessCulture #Leadership #Growth

One of the biggest questions I get from companies, large and small, is: How can we be more innovative? This past Wednesday I was invited by Constanza Cortés Moya, Javiera Correa Urzúa of Comedy corp and the amazing team at Banco BICE in #Chile to share my stories, experiences and thoughts on what I believe it takes to be innovative in today's fast-paced, AI driven world. But I didn't talk #AI, #technology, #marketing or new processes.  Instead I focused on something far more subtle, time proven and yet difficult. #Psychological safety.  I broke down my talk into 5 Key Rules or insights that I've found are indispensable if we really want our people to step out of their comfort zone and take risks, challenge us, admit mistakes and challenge each other. Through a combination of powerful, brutally honest and practical stories I used the stage to drive home the 5 things I've seen that #leaders must do if they want to promote more psychological safety on their teams and drive innovation: 1.  Don't hire based on education and skills.  Hire based on values, grit and diversity of experience. A person with the right values, who has pushed through tough times to get where they are can more easily pick missing skills than someone with the skills but with the wrong values and a fear of stepping outside their comfort zone. 2. Never stand still.  Create a space for people to be continuously learning and growing.  Whether it's courses, coaching, training or just a simple quarterly book reading club.  Always be learning. Share what you're reading as a leader and encourage others to be constantly learning and discuss what you learn as a team. 3.  Delegate and empower your teams.  Never be afraid to delegate tasks or projects even if your people fail or if it scares you.  People need to grow and leaders need to delegate in order to focus on their own growth. 4. Give and request feedback constantly.  I only learned about my failure to listen and actively "hear" others through feedback.  Give and ask for feedback often so it becomes a habit and less uncomfortable. 5. Shift your perspective on failure.  Using #okrs while I was at Google many years ago forced me to spend as much time revisiting failures of the past as planning for the future.  Failure is a cruel mistress but the only one that helps us learn. There are few things I love as much as public speaking and sharing stories.  Being on stage brings me joy, purpose and energy.  It's an opportunity for me to share many of the failures I learned from and share some successes. But more importantly it taps directly into my own personal Ikigai or reason for being: To bring the energy to move people to work on things that give them meaning and purpose. And that...makes it all worth doing. Thank you team BICE for your attention, warm welcome and for this chance to share the stage with you.  You all make this work worth doing. Be True, Be Curious, Be Driven. Patrick.

Should you try Google’s famous “20% time” experiment to encourage innovation? We tried this at Duolingo years ago. It didn’t work. It wasn’t enough time for people to start meaningful projects, and very few people took advantage of it because the framework was pretty vague. I knew there had to be other ways to drive innovation at the company. So, here are 3 other initiatives we’ve tried, what we’ve learned from each, and what we're going to try next. 💡 Innovation Awards: Annual recognition for those who move the needle with boundary-pushing projects. The upside: These awards make our commitment to innovation clear, and offer a well-deserved incentive to those who have done remarkable work. The downside: It’s given to individuals, but we want to incentivize team work. What’s more, it’s not necessarily a framework for coming up with the next big thing. 💻 Hackathon: This is a good framework, and lots of companies do it. Everyone (not just engineers) can take two days to collaborate on and present anything that excites them, as long as it advances our mission or addresses a key business need. The upside: Some of our biggest features grew out of hackathon projects, from the Duolingo English Test (born at our first hackathon in 2013) to our avatar builder. The downside: Other than the time/resource constraint, projects rarely align with our current priorities. The ones that take off hit the elusive combo of right time + a problem that no other team could tackle. 💥 Special Projects: Knowing that ideal equation, we started a new program for fostering innovation, playfully dubbed DARPA (Duolingo Advanced Research Project Agency). The idea: anyone can pitch an idea at any time. If they get consensus on it and if it’s not in the purview of another team, a cross-functional group is formed to bring the project to fruition. The most creative work tends to happen when a problem is not in the clear purview of a particular team; this program creates a path for bringing these kinds of interdisciplinary ideas to life. Our Duo and Lily mascot suits (featured often on our social accounts) came from this, as did our Duo plushie and the merch store. (And if this photo doesn't show why we needed to innovate for new suits, I don't know what will!) The biggest challenge: figuring out how to transition ownership of a successful project after the strike team’s work is done. 👀 What’s next? We’re working on a program that proactively identifies big picture, unassigned problems that we haven’t figured out yet and then incentivizes people to create proposals for solving them. How that will work is still to be determined, but we know there is a lot of fertile ground for it to take root. How does your company create an environment of creativity that encourages true innovation? I'm interested to hear what's worked for you, so please feel free to share in the comments! #duolingo #innovation #hackathon #creativity #bigideas

If you have been really lucky on a cruise you will have seen porpoises having great fun riding the bow wave of your ship. They stay just slightly ahead of the bow. Your innovation program should work the same way. For a time at American Airlines I ran an organization called SABRE Labs. We were to apply very new technology to business problems and build prototypes. Unfortunately, we didn’t ‘ride the bow wave’ of the business. We developed products we thought the business would like without getting input or buy in, and predictably we failed. We invented a process for customers to track their bags online ten years before that became common place. The business rejected it as unnecessary. We invented a corporate travel booking tool that would read your calendar and suggest potential flights and hotels for your meeting. It met with a similar fate. We were too far ahead of the business and were rejected as ‘propellor heads’. We quickly changed and took a more collaborative approach. We demoed new tech to business units and then brainstormed applications with them. We spent more time listening to their business problems before rushing off to prototype. I know our initial approach sounds stupid and it was, but many companies open an ‘innovation center’ and run into the same ‘not invented here’ barrier. We weren’t doing pure research like Bell Labs; we were trying to apply new tech for near term wins and thus needed to be closer to the business. If you are going to innovate successfully, ‘ride the bow wave’.  

Had a great time at yesterday’s InnoLead LinkedIn Live. Thanks to everyone who joined the conversation on how to build leadership support for innovation. Here are a few thoughts I shared based on real experience in the field: 𝟭. 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁, 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀. In your first 100 days, go to each business unit and ask: “What’s your #1 problem?” Get them to size the cost of not solving it. Then commit to fixing it and tie your success to that number. Innovation as a Service, tied to business pain. 𝟮. 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝘀, 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆. When leadership changes, don’t wait. Understand their goals, pressure, and allies. Present your current portfolio and ask: “Do we need to adjust this to match your priorities?” Give them early wins they can show internally. And what is better - that they can own. 𝟯. 𝗜𝗳 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲’𝘀 𝗽𝘂𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸, 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗲. If your impact is unclear or your focus isn’t seen as critical then you’ll be first in line when cuts come. So, make your value visible. If needed, find protection elsewhere in the org. Someone who believes in what you’re building and benefits from backing you. What do you do to ensure leadership trusts and supports your work? #CorporateInnovation #InnovationLeadership #ExecutionMatters #InnoleadLive #StartupMindset

I found this while on an afternoon stroll through Esalen. It beautifully summarizes my key learnings from this past week. Innovation doesn't happen during planned meetings or zoom calls. It happens through collisions of people who care about similar problems, and who have the freedom to ideate together. Our job as leaders is to create a culture where creativity thrives and is celebrated. Here are a few ways we can all work towards creating more innovative cultures: 1) Share your mission. Be loud. Be clear. Be consistent. In order for our team members to innovate, you need to give them something to care about first. Employees at mission driven companies report higher levels of engagement, higher retention and higher levels of innovation than companies who don't have a clear purpose or mission. 2) Focus on outcomes not outputs. Employees who have greater freedom on how they get their work done tend to report better overall outcomes and higher profits than companies with more rigid frameworks. Align on overall targets and objectives and let your team figure out their own ways of achieving them - you may be surprised at how good the results are. 3) Acknowledge and celebrate failures as learning moments. One of the best leaders I've worked for held space in each weekly team meeting for "F*ckups of the week" - a practice I have since emulated within my own teams. In order for creativity to flow, employees need to know that it's safe to make mistakes. A culture where failures are celebrated as learnings is one where creativity can thrive. 4) Create room for collisions. If you haven't been living under a rock, then you know the importance of hiring diverse talent and have done so. Groovy. The next part of the equation is amplifying the power of your diverse workforce by creating opportunities for these employees to engage with each other. I'm not talking about switching to being in the office 5 days a week. While that might yield positive results, it might also do so at the cost of employee wellness (this is not a ding on RTO - it's right for some companies, just not all). Instead, try creating quarterly employee summits where you openly discuss current business challenges and welcome all voices and ideas to be shared. If you have other thoughts or ideas on cultivating innovation, I'd love to hear them. #innovationculture #leadershipcoaching #leadershipdevelopment #esaleninstitute #humanpotential