3 Tips for Adapting an Innovative Mindset

And how I connected with a community in Nigeria

I was surprised when Michael Nelson, founder of Cobuilders, asked me to speak at MediaGIG2020. My topic: The Innovative Mindset.

What a topic! I had never heard of Michael and had a lot of hesitations: Why am I qualified for this? How can do this topic justice? Then I met Michael. I went from hesitation to passion.

Michael talked about solutions to create intentional, meaningful connections. We live in a world where people like/follow each other all the time, but often with very little meaning. Michael is on a mission to change that.

His platform creates intentional connections that help people move projects forward. It also unites communities that don’t normally interact, like entrepreneurs in Africa with entrepreneurs in the Bay Area. I was hooked.

At MediaGIG, I’d have the unique opportunity to speak to media pros in Nigeria, learn from leaders in media, and connect directly with ambitious builders.

The highlight: Lady E, award-winning journalist, commented that a strategy I used for aligning stakeholders could be applied to managing culture clashes in Africa. Whoa! One of the attendees then reached out to ask me if I would help strategize methods for connection Nigerian politicians and citizens. Wow!

I have been delighted at every turn of events since meeting Michael, and can’t wait to see what happens next. Here’s an overview of my talk.

What is innovation?

I surveyed communities in tech to get answers.

I surveyed several communities in tech and got some great answers.

I learned that we all share concrete ideas about innovation: “solving problems,” “improving products,” etc.

And abstract ideas: “thinking outside of the box,” “born out of,” “ability to come up with,” “being before your time.”

So…what is innovation?

Innovation is maximizing limited resources to move anything forward.

For every problem you’re trying to solve you have certain resources available to you to move forward. Innovation is that part of your imagination that uses your limited resources to move forward. Hollywood said it best.

How to unlock innovation

We’re not going to wind up stranded on Mars, but there are steps we can take to unlock innovation. It starts with answering…

Three questions

1. What resources do you have?
2. What does it mean to move forward?
3. How do you use limited resources to move forward?

Resources

Before you can move forward, you need to do a rigorous review of the resources you have available. Resources are your tools for moving forward.

Rule: Focus on the haves, not the have-nots.

We tend to look at a problem through the lens of what we don’t have. I don’t have…money, materials, skills, network, etc. This mindset won’t get you far.

Example: When I had the idea for LessonsUp, I didn’t have money, brand, a team, nada. But when I thought carefully about it I developed quite a list. The short version of my list:

• Time: Your time is precious! We’ll talk next about how to be strategic with it.
• Network: Make a spreadsheet of everyone you know who could help you with your problem. Check LinkedIn, look for people who know people who know people and so on.
• Apps! You have a world of FREE apps. List the ones are relevant to your problem.
• Communities: Slack groups, Facebook groups, Reddit, and more. Make a list of communities that care about the problem you’re solving.
• A strong hypothesis: “Seniors will pay for lessons in technology.” I had a very strong hypothesis about the problem I wanted to solve, but no matter what stage you’re at, develop a strong problem statement or hypothesis. This will help you think through resources and how to best move forward.

Move Forward

Now that you’ve got resources, it’s time to move forward. But what does “move forward” look like? For any problem, there are many directions you could go. And you might waste a lot of time and resources.

To move forward, ask: What will make the biggest impact right now?

Examine what you could do to move forward, and prioritize based on impact.

Example: For LessonsUp, I could have tried to raise money, build a team, an app, created lesson plans, lesson videos, etc. When I looked closely at what would make the biggest impact I decided that I needed to test my hypothesis: “Seniors will pay money for lessons in technology.”

Use your resources to move forward

Once you know what resources you have and what it means to move forward, you’re ready to innovate! Now for the fun part…use your limited resources to move forward.

Example: With LessonsUp, I wanted to use my time, network, and available apps to find out if seniors would pay for lessons. I mapped out channels and devised tests to get answers. Things I did:

• Post fliers around San Francisco: I got one of our best customers at that time thru a flier
• Call retirement communities
• Visit senior centers in person
• Create Google Ads (and brainstorm ads with a creative friend!)

• Posted on NextDoor…boom! We have a winner.

One post on NextDoor and I wound up making $5k/month giving lessons.

Innovation in a nutshell. Maximize resources to move anything forward. But wait, there’s more! To unlock innovation there are some ways of thinking that you can adopt.

Characteristics of an innovative mindset

1. Treat failure as a learning opportunity.

• Example: Early in my career I led a growth team to scale an on-demand workforce of iPhone technicians.
• 15 experiments/month. There were 5 growth managers, they each did 3 experiments/month, all with the goal of making our on-demand technicians more successful (and increasing revenue, gotta love those KPIs!).
• 80% failure rate! We were lucky if 3/15 experiments worked out. But that’s ok! Every time we failed we got better and better at understanding our community and how we could best move forward.

For inquiring minds: our winning strategies:

• Dashboards with key metrics and motivators. “If you do x number of iPhone repairs, you’ll make x amount of dollars”
• Education! Webinars on how to connect with customers, create meaningful experiences, use our apps, get more sales, etc.
• Leaderboards
• Community! An active community on Yammer where iTechs could ask questions, learn from each other, etc.

2. Constantly challenge your assumptions

Have strongly held ideas about what you’re working on (backed by data!), but don’t let your ideas become your blockers. When we‘re convinced that we’re right, we fail to see where we can improve, or where we might go wrong. To keep your own assumptions from getting in the way, turn them around.

Example:

• Assumption: People will pay for lessons in technology
• Challenge: People will not pay for lessons in technology

When you flip your own assumption you adapt a new mindset that may be key in moving forward.

3. Calculate risk in terms of what you have to gain, not what you have to lose.

We tend to think about what we have to lose: “No one will like my ideas,” “no one will listen,” “no one will care.” This thinking limits the actions we might be able to take to move forward. Stop thinking about what you have to lose, and instead think about what you have to gain.

• “What if no one will like my ideas?” becomes “What if someone will like my ideas?”
• Fall in love with the magic of “What if”

Consider this. If you’re starting at ground zero, you can only gain. If no one likes your ideas today, then no one will like them tomorrow either. Unless you take a risk!

Now that we’ve turned our thinking around, there are a few tools to get the rest of the way there.

Tools For Adapting an Innovative Mindset

1. Know your target market / audience
2. Brainstorm: This is a tried but true tactic and we use it ALL THE TIME in startups
3. Ask for help / Offer help: When you ask for help, do it in a way that offers help. “Share this Tweet…because I want you to” becomes, “If you share this Tweet, you might reach the one person who needs help right now”
4. Tell everyone about your project: Especially important to go outside of your network. The people you already know likely share similar perspective and resources. Go outside the comfort zone to maximize possibilities.
5. Take big risks: We talked about this in mindset, but it cannot be overstated.

Let’s chat target market. This is one of your biggest tools, and one of the best ways to unlock innovation. Do research, figure out who you’re solving a problem for, and get downright creepy about how well you know them.

Note: your target market is not necessarily a “market” or user base. Depending on the problem, it could be a single person or groups of people.

Example: Disney v Pixar.

At the outset of the iPad I was building interactive books with Disney. We were releasing a comic book app with the movie Brave. Yay! Dream job. Yes and…everything was going great right up until a BIG skirmish between Disney and Pixar exploded and threatened to DELAY the book. Nightmare! The execs would not care why it was delayed. It was up to us to keep it on track. Given that I was managing the production of iPad books, it was up to me to keep the thing on track.

• I had a problem and my resources were Disney UX and Pixar art team.
• The disagreement: Arrows v no arrows. The iPad was brand new. Disney UX wanted arrows to cue the user on how to navigate. Great idea, right? Wrong! Pixar DID NOT want arrows to disrupt the integrity of the art.
• I thought carefully about the motivations of the two groups: UX and art. Then I empathized, listened, and proposed a solution.

1. Agree!

• I told all the peeps on the Pixar team (individually, not in a group email) that nothing was more important than the art.
• I told all the peeps on the UX team that nothing was more important than the user experience. “If they can’t figure out how to move forward, then they won’t see any of the art!”

2. Listen!

• After agreeing, I listened to everyone who wanted to be heard. Which meant phone calls with all of them.

3. Propose solution!

• Remember, you cannot propose a solution until you empathize and listen. (Esp for this project, which wasn’t very long after the Disney-Pixar buy out.)
• I invented an abstract third party solution so that the two groups would not have to agree with each other. “Let’s do some market research.” (Yes, the iPad was new at the time, but there were similar enough examples to look at). Within days we had a solution: Arrows blink after x seconds of idle time.

Now we’ve got the full story.

Innovation: Maximize resources to move forward

• Identify Resources
• Define what it means to move forward
• Use your resources to move forward

Bonus:

• Adapt an innovative mindset
• Use your tool set

With the right mindset, you can move anything forward.