How to Create Opportunities Through Innovation

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

Creating a culture of innovation starts with making space for it. I learned that innovation requires time that is untethered from the daily grind. In my latest initiative, we instituted "innovation hours"—a set time each week when the team could explore new ideas without the pressure of immediate deadlines or deliverables. During these hours, the usual hierarchy flattened. Everyone, from interns to executives, had an equal voice. The diversity of thought led to some of our most creative projects. It wasn't about forcing creativity but providing the right conditions for it to flourish. Encouraging this practice showed me that when you give people the space to think creatively, they will. Make innovation hours a part of your company's routine and watch the seeds of creativity grow into something extraordinary.

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

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.

Innovation opportunities arise due to existing (and/or anticipated) problems. Innovation is often presented as exciting and captivating in the potential. Yet, the work behind it is often less than glamorous. Often I am asked, "but how do I find a problem to solve?". Pay attention to what is frustrating...even the small things are great ways to practice your ideation, creativity and overall innovative behaviors. This morning, I went to the post office to mail something and brought my tape with me. No matter how hard I try, the tape always comes off the teeth and/or guards that are meant to prevent it from blending in with the rest of the tape. I then spent the next few minutes trying to find the start of the tape so I could actually use it and mail my package. At that point, I took a picture of the mess of tape that had to get thrown away. Here is a problem in need of a solution. It is a small problem but is an example of something that could be done better. How could it be done better? That is where your innovative behaviors and innovation comes in... I don't have the answer to this one but someone will think of it who decides to pursue it. The benefit? Less mess, less frustration, happier use of tape 😀 . #problemidentification #innovation #ideation