In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking innovation with Dr. Victoria Mensch. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!
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Establishing Innovation Culture with Dr. Victoria Mensch, Silicon Valley Executive Academy
We see “Innovation” reflected in many value statements, and as a descriptor of how many companies want to be perceived as “We are at the forefront of innovation,” or “We lead innovation.” But, what does it really mean to have a culture that fosters & sparks innovation? What does it mean to support a culture where innovation is a key value differentiator? We wanted you to learn from someone with a ton of experience doing just that, so we welcomed on Dr. Victoria Mensch. She’s the CEO of Silicon Valley Executive Academy (SVEA), which provides executive immersion programs in Silicon Valley. Make sure to sign up for their Innovation Insights Newsletter. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- AI adoption is not innovation
- How the Academy’s custom immersion programs work
- The real driver behind resistance to change is fear
- You don’t need to copy Silicon Valley’s culture
- Stop doing one draining task to make room for change
And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.
Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:
Show Notes
- Establishing Innovation Culture with Dr. Victoria Mensch, Silicon Valley Executive Academy
- [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business
- [01:52] Welcome to the show, Dr. Victoria Mensch!
- [03:15] Innovation is not a single breakthrough idea, but the ability to continuously create value, adapt, and reinvent
- [05:02] The on-premise to cloud shift forcing enterprise software companies to reinvent their entire business model
- [08:13] Does innovation lead with consumer demand or with technology?
- [10:00] The three horizons of innovation: improve (40%), introduce (40%), innovate (20%)
- [11:51] Silicon Valley’s willingness to take risk, and “fail cheap” (not just fail fast) through low-cost experiments
- [16:06] The real driver behind resistance to change is fear
- [18:59] Why transformation requires a strong visionary leader at the top, not just bottom-up effort
- [21:46] Why companies get inspired by Silicon Valley immersion trips but struggle to replicate it back home
- [23:15] You don’t need to copy Silicon Valley’s culture
- [24:39] Practical starting points: break one silo, run one small experiment, reframe “what if it fails” to “what would make it work”
- [28:20] How the Academy’s custom immersion programs work
- [36:31] AI adoption is not innovation
- [37:59] “If you started this business today with this technology, would it look different?”
- [42:43] Stop doing one draining task to make room for change
- [45:36] Shared philosophy: “what must be true” reframes pessimism into opportunity-seeking
- Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
- Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
What is Strategic Counsel?
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Transcript
Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
00:01
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast. If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead and operate in business, you are in the right place. In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking to reveal a fresh perspective. This unlocks opportunity for you, your team and your business. Now let’s get to it.
00:29
Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast. I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini. And today we’re going to talk about innovation culture. Now we see innovation and we say innovation. It’s reflected in many value statements as well as a descriptor of how many companies want to be perceived. Like we are at the forefront of innovation or we lead innovation. But what does it really mean to have a culture that actually fosters and sparks innovation?
00:55
And what does it mean to support a culture where innovation is a key value differentiator? Yes. And as you all know by now, I love words and always think about the importance of words and going beyond just the generic term like I just set up or where we get these words that cover so many things, they don’t mean anything anymore. And this is one of those. And it’s just become such a buzzword that what I find with people is that they nearly, they just kind of like blank or gloss over without some sort of intentional definition, which I know we are.
01:25
definitely going to get into today. I’m super excited about this one. But the point I want to make is just that once this happens, it becomes more of an uphill battle to make it actually mean something again. Yeah, exactly. And we have a very special guest who is an expert here in innovation culture, and that’s Dr. Victoria Mensch. And she is the CEO of the Silicon Valley Executive Academy. So Dr. Victoria, you want to introduce yourself and give the listeners a bit of your story?
01:52
Thank you so much, Jan. Thank you, April. I’m so happy to be here on this podcast and happy to talk about myself always. My background is a little unconventional. I actually started as a psychologist. have a PhD in psychology. And then about 25 years ago, I moved to Silicon Valley and spent a lot of time in various Silicon Valley companies, large companies, small companies.
02:19
And what fascinated me most about Silicon Valley companies is really that culture and that ability to come up with new breakthrough ideas over and over and over again. And that’s what we do at Silicon Valley Executive Academy now, that this is a valuable process and culture and scenarios that we think can be adopted by companies outside of Silicon Valley. So that’s when we were talking about
02:46
Silicon Valley, the nation playbook and Silicon Valley companies. We’re really talking about that process of innovation that can help to make this repeatable. Hmm. Yep. I love that. We’re to have such a great conversation about that because I think it’s such a cornerstone of how businesses and companies really need to think. But, oh, so often as April said, kind of glossed over and just kind of used very superficially. Dr. Victoria.
03:15
kind of just set that up is that innovation can be such a loaded word. What does it really mean in your world? Paint the picture for us. I agree with you that innovation as a word is being overused, I believe. When it’s hard talking to companies, to executives, it’s always something new, something else. So it could be a new idea.
03:38
and that’s called innovation or it could be a new product and that’s called innovation. think a lot of companies, almost all companies now have innovation somewhere among their values. From our perspective, the academy perspective and my perspective, specifically, I think innovation is really about that ability to continuously create value, adapt and reinvent. It’s not one specific idea that once in a while comes to a head of
04:06
a genius, right? There are lots of geniuses around and it’s not specifically one process, but really that combination of scenarios and those as I said, ability to really reinvent yourself over and over and over. So adapt to changing conditions in the outside environment. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s really interesting. And, know, Anne and I use the word curiosity a lot in the framing of
04:34
how you think about that ability to continuously make changes and not just within one lane or like we’ve been saying, one definition of innovation, but that over and over again. So I would love if you could, whether you can give an example through a client lens or if it’s just more like this is how we see it work well so that contextually our listeners can understand like, okay, and so how would I or we go about doing that?
05:02
There are a of examples that we can point from the past that we now looking back, we’ll look at them. So, oh, this is the reinvention, that this is change. I think what’s interesting in Silicon Valley is because a lot of companies are really based in technology. So those technological ways almost push everyone to continuously reinvent this business model. So one of the examples that I lived through in my experience that the enterprise software company
05:30
was when there was the shift from on-premise to cloud technology. When you think about it, in on-premise world, not to be too technical, but it requires a big server farm within the company that’s owned. Obviously, all these different scenarios are very personalized to a company, and then all of a sudden the cloud technology comes in. Now, everything that you work for,
05:56
that made you a successful company for on-premise world. Now you have to reapply that in a totally different environment. It’s a different infrastructure that’s required. It’s a different customer that’s required. It’s totally different pricing model just because the cost of new companies, they’re cloud-native. They’re totally different from your cost that you invested for years and years. So that’s what we’re talking about.
06:22
One of the things that a lot of companies, especially in technology world, go through is this innovators dilemma. How do you actually adapt to that new world? That’s an example. think a lot of companies went through Microsoft as a famous example as well of when they were switching from on-premise to Cloud. Now, mobile wave is another one of those that actually pushed a lot of companies to reinvent themselves with the appearance of Uber and Airbnb.
06:52
a lot of those platform companies as well. Now there are plenty of examples where you have to start thinking about what’s next, but before you actually have to. In my own kind of world, everything was beautiful, great, big contract, very successful product. It did not really translate one-to-one to the Cloud world. If you want to adapt to that new world, you really need to start making changes ahead of time.
07:21
Yeah, so interesting. ironically, so we’re in the restaurant world, April and I, and when my one clients are using a system, a point of sale system that doesn’t operate on the cloud and my brain just like, why would you guys even do that? Where you actually have to go to terminal in order to like get everything out of the system. like, who does that? So, I mean, even like, you know, the pace of change and the pace of adoption of change.
07:48
And I’m going to get to that in a second, but what you’re saying kind of struck a question for me because I think this question comes up a lot. is, we call the innovation dilemma, but it’s also the, are we innovating for the dilemma? So a lot of times I know in like the startup world, but even in corporations, mean, this was like that in P and G too. There’s always the chicken and the egg of does the innovation come first or is the need come first?
08:13
Right. And so a lot of times on P &G we’d say, oh, no, no, we get all of our insights from the consumer and we develop based on the need. But then if somebody has this like big breakthrough of technology, you kind of like get really excited about the technology and then you kind of define how you’re going to use it later. in this innovation culture, what leads? That’s a very interesting question. And I don’t think there is just one one thing that leads that. So there’s definitely a consumer demand.
08:40
And there is definitely changes in technology. think technology is a big, if you think of it, is a big factor in something like this. So the consumer, the way a lot of companies define consumer demand, we’re going to go and ask consumers what they want, and then we’ll build what they told us to build. There’s a famous quote that’s attributed to Ford that if I ask consumers what they want,
09:07
in a car, they would say, we want the bigger horse, right? So that’s a really tricky question. And I think that Apple CEO is definitely, you know, went through that as well, that yes, you ask consumers what they need, but you don’t take this one to one, you actually translate that, adding your creativity and your vision of what you want to build as well. So that’s one part of it, that you can’t just ask consumers what they want and build that. You really need to translate it through the lens of your vision.
09:37
where the world is going and part of that vision is really technology and how that impacts the future of the world. So something that doesn’t exist today doesn’t mean that it won’t exist tomorrow, but if you don’t start building today, you won’t be ready for tomorrow. So that’s when we are talking to companies and how to account for that.
10:00
uncertainty in the world. That’s where it comes to projections, right? So we’re talking about, often we talk about three horizons of innovation. So the first horizon is what you can improve now, right? You already have your product, you already have your business and it’s working. What can you improve, right? So the next one would be what you can actually introduce that’s different based on your vision of the future.
10:27
And then the last one is innovation. That’s the third horizon. What’s your view of the world five years from now, 10 years from now, and how that view of the world impact your business? And then you actually do this. I think we recommend 40 % improve, think another 40 % introduce and only 20%.
10:55
is innovate because that features in certain so you’re always trying to gauge where is going, but you have to allow for that uncertainty. Yeah, well, and you know, as you were talking, going back to the first point about the consumer, mean, that was the thing that would always drive me crazy and research is we would say, well, seven people said this, so we should go make the thing. And my thing was always that’s not an actual insight. We have to think about what they’re saying and why. And then I love your point about layering in my
11:24
words would be what we can actually address and do as a company based on the vision of where we are going. And then using what’s happening in the world or the category or the competitive set to say, like, what is that kind of perfect mix of who we are addressing what the consumer wants and being able to stand out different? But the thing that I wanted to ask is on the other side, and it kind of builds on what Anne said about the technology comes up, how do you keep
11:51
clients in line to actually use the technology in the way that matches those things versus shiny object. That’s so cool. I want to go do X and not being able to tie it back to really what the business can, should, et cetera. Well, I think there’s a place for both. So when we talk about Silicon Valley and addition playbook, a big portion of that playbook is taking race and running experiments. So what Silicon Valley is really, how is Silicon Valley different, especially this
12:20
part of world of Silicon Valley is different is that there’s this willingness to take risk, right? So, and if you think even from the statistics point of view, this is rewarded actually in Silicon Valley. So founders who tried and did not succeed are much more likely to raise funds for their next attempt than founders who never tried, right? So there is a mechanism reinforcing that risk taking. Now you go back to the traditional companies
12:49
The difference is that the traditional companies, already have their business model that’s working. So it’s much more difficult for them to take those risks because they have a lot to lose, they’re not started up. How do you actually account for that within the organization? think that’s important because that willingness to take risk is what’s going to drive your innovation and not just from a leadership perspective, but down the ladder as well within the organization to make people feel safe.
13:17
to actually express their ideas and try new ideas. Now, the second part of that is how do you come up with ideas? But the second part is how do you actually, how do you want to decide which one to pursue, right? And that’s where the experiment comes in. And that experiment, I think, well, I always, when I talk to established businesses and say, I say, well, the Silicon Valley says, fail fast. I say, don’t fail fast, fail cheap, right? So, you run lots of experiments.
13:46
around lots of experiments that don’t really require big investments and then establish a process to understand which one of those you want to take further. So that’s the difference. I think what’s good about failing fast and cheap right now is AI technology, right? It really allows you to run those experiments quickly and decide what you want to do with them and how you want to take them further.
14:10
Yeah, I think this is such a critical point. And I think what’s also important just to build on what you were saying is the concept of innovation being a internal capability capacity thing, as well as an external like productization or service oriented way that you execute your business, because there’s both sides of that coin. And I do believe it requires a mindset shift. Like, for example, I was in a coaching session.
14:38
And I was talking to my coaching client and we were talking about some of the current systems and he’s like, but it’s so easy. You just kind of do this, this and this and this and this. I’m like, yeah, but if you only had to go this and this and kind of take away some of the stuff in the middle, would that be easier? He goes, yeah, it would be easier. And then things kind of add up. When you can reduce the amount of time or the capacity that it takes to
15:07
do some of these tasks that feel kind of mundane, but can be automated or can be systematized in some way. You start to develop capability and capacity with your team that then allows you to do more innovation that’s more externally oriented as well. So maybe you can speak to a little bit about like this mindset shift that needs to happen because I even like when I say that, and he’s a very open-minded person, but it comes down to the
15:36
fear of what kind of cost the change is going to have, right? And so if I do this, feels like, you know, it’s going to be better in a long run, but the immediate change is costly. So maybe you can speak a little bit to the mindset shift that has happened. were speaking to the playbook, but like other things that these leaders need to keep in mind and consider as they’re thinking about innovation, they’re thinking about what it costs to implement the innovation and then the internal and then the external. And that’s a lot. So you break it down however you want and
16:06
We’ll come back to this thing. Yes, when we talk about technology, we tend to talk about costs, right? So, but I think from a mindset perspective, this is a big excuse to actually mask the fear. And the fear is what if it doesn’t work? So I have something that’s working right now, and now you’re asking me to change something that’s working. And my fear is that what if it doesn’t work? So that’s…
16:35
You know, important to understand that that’s the driver of those objections to changes in technology. The mindset shift here is that what if it does work? What would need to happen for this to work? That’s a different question, right? That really allows you to look at the problem and the solution differently. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t look at the costs that we shouldn’t run our financial
17:05
planning and budgeting processes. But what I’m saying is that one thing that is not that easy to account in those calculations is the risk of inaction. What actually if you don’t do anything, what’s going to happen? And a lot of times when we’re talking about technology, especially breakthrough technology, those risks of inaction of not changing, if you calculate them, if you actually take the discipline,
17:32
to go through them. Those are much higher than the risks of taking action and maybe not succeeding fully in that. Well, and I love what you said about, what do you say, fail cheap, not fail fast. Was it cheap you said? Yes. I chuckled. Inexpensive. No, no, I just want to make sure I said it right. But I think that point is so well taken. so my background is in agencies.
17:59
Right. And so as you were talking, I was thinking about the cost of what has happened to that industry. And I’m picking on one industry, right? Like there’s lots of places where this has gone on. But I, one of my clients, um, that I’m with regularly is an agency. And the good thing about them is they want to embrace the change. Right. So they’re willing to test and learn and use AI and figure it out and all of that. But on the other side of that, there’s so many agencies that are no longer. I have lots of.
18:29
colleagues who were amazing that are out of work. There is a completely different landscape within that space and then you throw in AI and it just kind of blew up a lot of things for that industry. But I would love if you could talk a little bit to how do you get people over the hump of that? Because I will personally say that I was one of those people in the industry being like, oh, I can see it coming, right? There’s a train wreck coming and that was before we even knew about AI or where technology was gonna go. And now fast forward, I don’t know, 15.
18:58
20 years probably, the landscape looks very, very different. I just think your point is so important that if you make little changes, they’re cheaper, they’re faster, but you’re moving yourself along versus sitting on your hands and waiting because you’re scared. And then all of a sudden the bigger problems happen in that, in my example, some of those places no longer exists, et cetera. Yes. And I think that’s the brain work, improve, introduce and innovate is very good.
19:26
framework, that’s the discipline that I think each business should actually adopt. That’s one thing I want to say. And the second one is if you look at the successes in kind of transformation of the companies, I would say in 100 % of the cases, behind those transformational effort is a very strong visionary leader. So that leadership is really cannot be substituted with anything else.
19:55
Yes, you want to have the bottom up, you want to bring people along, you want to have all these systems and the incentives and the processes changing in that. But without that leader and the champion at the top of the organization, that very rarely succeeds. Yeah, I think that’s a really, like, really important point too, because, and we talked about this when we were doing our pre-call is, you know, growing up in P &G, invariably every year you would go
20:23
for inspiration to Silicon Valley and you would go to Google or you would go to, know, someplace to kind of shake up the complacency and get excited about innovation. And we would, and we would talk about it and we hear these like amazing presentations. And then we would come back and then our leaders would be like, oh, we can’t do any of that. Our structure doesn’t allow for that. Our processes don’t allow for that. Our timeframes or our timelines don’t allow for that.
20:50
Maybe we don’t have the people, the right people to do that. I know you’re the whole, like what you do is to help companies think about this differently. So in April kind of got to this question, I’m gonna go in like really deep of like, how does a company, and you can try to, can take on P &G if you want and use them as an example, but if you think that that is like, okay, there’s no chance there, then I totally respect that. But like, how would you, how do you get these leaders
21:18
to think more visionary to like actually see a practical application that they can then go take and go do something with. And maybe you can give an example of, if you can, of how that’s been successful. That would be really, really helpful. Well, I hear you on and I think we discussed that in our briefing call before this reporting of your experience with B &G and people who coming to Silicon Valley and kind of
21:46
immersing themselves into a culture of Silicon Valley. And that’s what we do, right? So that’s our programs. actually come here and executives from traditional companies and we introduce them to different parts and elements of Silicon Valley ecosystem. And that problem that you described, it’s a common theme that we’ve heard before. So now we do have a process to counter that. So there is enormous value and kind of motivational
22:15
push when you are part of this ecosystem, when you, especially from a traditional company, right? So when you come here in Silicon Valley and you talk to all those innovators and entrepreneurs and, and executives who are pushing this technology forward, really breakthrough. But then you go back and you go back to the same systems that you had. So now what’s important to understand, and that’s what we’ve been discussing since the beginning of this, like you don’t need to replicate Silicon Valley in your company.
22:45
So what you really actually need to understand, what are those principles that run this? Like you don’t need to go back to your office and all of a sudden paint the walls in orange color and have a cafeteria that serves free food, right? So those are the perks and those are noticeable things, but they’re really kind of the outer shell of that. The most important part of that transformational value, right? So you look at the principles, some of those that we talked about today, which is risk taking. How do you…
23:15
How within the organization, what can you do within the organization to allow for that safety for people to come up with ideas? A lot of ideas are really at the bottom level of the organization that nobody ever hear about, right? So then how do you run experiment? How do you actually introduce that culture of experiment? So it’s not like you’re going through failures over and over and over again, but you’re turning them into lessons. And that’s the discipline to implement that as well.
23:42
We’re talking about the ecosystem density, for example. So when you actually mix people together from different departments to allow them to cross-pollinate with those ideas. And we talk about open networks when you understand that you can’t really do everything within the organization. I think it’s very true for large organizations as well. When I was in large organization, 98 % of my communications was within the organization, not outside the organization. So how do you introduce that?
24:12
Obviously, when you’re in the leadership and executive capacity, you have more tools to introduce this. But even at the lower level of the organizations, there are things that you can do to implement that. There are steps that we go through. This is something that you can do once you go back to your office. Break one silo. Come up with one problem that you want to solve and break one silo. Bring people together.
24:39
let’s solve that little problem. So that’s a step forward, right? So that’s one, well, let’s run one experiment. Let’s not talk about the whole culture experiment, but in my own work, I can run an experiment. In my team, I can run an experiment. In my department, I can run an experiment, right? So I can actually champion that from the top of the ladder or from the bottom of the ladder as well. Change one question when you’re in the team meeting and somebody asking you, should we do that or not? Do you change one question from, what if it doesn’t work?
25:08
right, to what can we do to make it work? So these are the small things that allow to absorb the lessons and these slides from the immersion program from those innovative organizations. So I’m going to ask what may be an obvious or even dumb question, but I’m asking it because as you were talking, I was thinking it. So two part one.
25:36
They come and learn from you and then the idea is that they go back and execute it themselves or are you involved? Two, is it just leader slash leadership team or is there different representatives across the company? Does it depend on the company? Like what does it look like? I’m just trying to get like, well, I’m asking the question so I can see it in my head, but also give people a sense of like, what would this look like and what ownership does the company have to be expected to take?
26:02
versus where do you jump in and assist? Because mindset change is what we were just talking about, right? And so I’m thinking about all the people that even Anne and I work with and how much change is hard. So that’s where I’m going. Well, there’s a big variety of programs. So at the end of the day, what we’re here to do is really to kind of provide access to all those insights and expertise and the culture that exists here so that people can experience them.
26:30
leadership and the teams can experience them for themselves. The wiki rate, those programs according to the business needs and objectives of the company, their custom programs. Some companies would bring a leadership, you know, up 1 % of leaders and they would come here and their goal will be to actually put everyone on the same page. So we are coming from all different parts of the organization and the world.
26:56
and different countries of the organization and we get together and we have this experience and we see how other people are implementing innovation and we see how technology is being developed and what people are doing with that and we have that exchange peer-to-peer exchange experience based knowledge sharing so that we can take that back to the organization. Sometimes there’s a department that wants to validate their roadmap.
27:23
example, because what we’re thinking where we’re going is what we are thinking where the the technology is going. So can we actually validate with with what’s being developed in Silicon Valley? Some people want to be part of the ecosystem for different reasons. So those are customs. They come with different means. What we what we offer is that once you want to get this very intense experience, whether it’s one day or five days or 10 days, what we offer is to go back and help
27:52
to sort out all those insights. So we provide that framework, know, 30, 60, 90 days, what did you learn, how we can incorporate that. So we help to get together after this intense experience and actually go through insight by insight, objective by objective, how can you absorb this within your organization? Yeah, they could be helpful if you don’t mind. Can you take us through maybe somebody who’s been there?
28:20
that would be coming for more of a general kind of culture innovation shift and kind of take us through a little bit of what that would look like within the academy and what would they experience? What’s that transformation without giving away too much of like the secret sauce because obviously we want people to come in and see for themselves but kind of paint the picture a little bit if you could with somebody or an example or a case study.
28:48
So we usually start with way before they come to experience the program. And we start with identifying what the business objectives are. What is it that they want to get out of this program? And then we also ask questions about the business and apply our own knowledge and strategic understanding of where the industry is going and what other companies are doing there. And we come up with this set of
29:18
themes that will be explored there. I can tell you that innovation culture is a big thing, right? So it’s just understanding what we’re talking about, that innovation playbook and how I can take advantage of that. Emerging technologies is a big one as well. And those technologies obviously vary. Some of those are horizontal technologies. Some of those are industry specific, for example. If it’s a manufacturing companies, then they would obviously want to see the innovation within the manufacturing industry.
29:48
maybe robotics and automation within that industry. If it’s a consumer product industry, they obviously wanted to look at more of the customer tools and maybe branding tools and where that’s going, where tech companies are taking kind of the next level of brand creation and customer experience. But that’s where we start. And then over here, we have a large network of companies within the ecosystem and experts within the ecosystem.
30:17
that are willing to share their experience with them. So that’s at the beginning of the program, we provide that framework. So when you go from company to company in the conversation from expert to expert, you actually go through the list of insights that answers to the question that we set up in the beginning. So that’s how it usually looks. again, it depends on the availability of the companies, whether it’s one day, two days, five days, 10 days, it’s very custom.
30:46
So we conclude the program usually with another kind of wrap up session where we are going through everything that they experienced and how they internalize what they saw and what they they experienced and the answers that they were getting. We’re helping them to put in the framework and again create their own innovation playbook based on that experience and usually.
31:15
ends with again, 30, 60, 90 days plan. What can you do when you go back into your office on Monday? What are the changes that you want to implement right now? What are those things that you want to do 30 days from now, 60, 90 days from now? And then we actually follow up with the workshops that allow to monitor the progress. Obviously, some of those initiatives would be that they’re initially
31:45
they kind of penciled in at the end of the program, some of those will go forward and some of those will not go forward. But that’s the process. So, and we hope to kind of go in that process in more or less disciplined manner. Some companies would come back for deeper engagements with a specific expert and a specific problem that they identify during this week. Let’s say just recently we had a program
32:15
with a large consumer program, consumer product organization. And they came to understand about the Indonesia culture, but also how AI is progressing from pilot stage to the scale deployment. We experimented a lot.
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recently in the age of AI. And now companies are really looking at what do we do now? So how do we actually take this forward? One of the follow-ups from that one was they want to be much more strategic about agentic AI and what they can do in that agentic area. that would be the next step of our engagement with them when we will help to actually facilitate the
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building of the strategy and understanding of the impact and actual implementation plan for that specific area of interest for them. So how do you vet clients as they come in and or how do they know that they’re ready for you?
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So like if we have people listening right now to what you guys do and the opportunity of this, like for Ann and me, we always say we’re vetting the potential as much as they’re vetting us, right? Because we wanna make sure that we’re getting to the right fit on both sides so we can all be successful. So I would love if you could speak to like, you know, what are you listening for, hearing for to make the recommendation that you work together? And what can companies be thinking about looking at to say if they’re quote unquote ready for something like this?
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Well, everybody is ready. It’s the level of the program that we want to offer. Some of our customers, they come for the second, third, and fourth, and fifth time. So it’s always a different program. So they’re progressing in that area. It could be the same team that comes over and over over again with more specific problems, with more specific objectives, more specific questions that they want to ask. Or it could be that a different part of the organization has come.
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and then they go through more or less the same experience. When you look at the surface level, right? And then that’s the reason why I talk about Silicon Valley Innovation Playbook, because Silicon Valley is an ecosystem, if you think of it. It’s really an ecosystem. It’s not one person, one company. It’s a mechanism. It’s basically a fabric of innovation, if you think about it. So a good introductory.
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kind of level of that will be introduction into that ecosystem at different parts of the ecosystem. It could be Silicon Valley legends. It could be startups that are developing cutting edge technologies. It could be ecosystem players like accelerators and incubators. It could be research institutions. So that ecosystem and your experience in that, how all these different parts are working together to really serve that machine.
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that for decades now has been producing innovation over and over and over and over again. So that’s that’s that would be the beginning of right kind of the the first the first view of that and then what you get out of it you’re obviously getting you know a knowledge and expert knowledge on what’s going on you also get the network because you get introduced to all those experts there they’re not
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that readily available. And the third one is this huge inspirational value. that question of what if it doesn’t work, that question becomes a little less scary. So you see all these people that are making these bets and making this work. You mentioned AI when you were going through your overview. I would love if you could hit on it specifically, because I think a lot of companies, when they think of innovation, they think of AI.
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and they’re trying to figure out how to integrate that best into their practices and systems. So can you just speak a little bit about what that looks like now? And are there specific AI tools or mechanisms that you are finding are most useful for businesses or how are you suggesting them figuring out what’s the best way to leverage AI for them?
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Yeah, so the first thing I want to say is that AI adoption is not really innovation, right? So AI is a big technological trend. We tend to overestimate the impact of this trend on a short term and definitely underestimate the impact of it on the long term. So now there’s still a lot of companies and leaders who are still experimenting, right?
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Some of the companies, they haven’t really touched AI beyond kind of a writing hell, right? So that’s as much automation as they can stomach at the moment. So there’s a huge variety of different stages where the companies are in the AI effort. But I think what’s important to understand, again, back to that question that AI adoption is not innovation. So we’re talking about improving, introducing, and innovating.
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The improving, yes. Do you have the process that maybe takes longer, maybe a little bit more intense than it needs to be? Maybe there’s someone who’s doing data entry, for example. But that’s an improvement. If you just apply AI to that, that would be an improvement. Let’s say in the marketing world, if it took you a week before to write the blog, now it can take you a second to write hundreds of blogs. So that would be an improvement on the existing process.
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But is it going to be an innovation, right? So the innovation part is that something that comes from transformation. And the question to ask is that if you were to start your business today, given the technology that exists now, would your business look differently? That’s the transformation part, right? So you can apply AI to a process that exists. The question to ask is like, does this process need to exist?
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If you can write 100 blogs in a second now, do you need 100 blogs? What would be the quality of those blogs? What’s going to happen with that talent that you hired for marketing? You hired that talent for creativity, for understanding the customer. Now, marketing that is being written by ChildGPT is at the same quality. Those are the questions that you want to ask. What is it that you want to
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How do you want to reconsider, to reinvent the processes that you currently have? It’s not really an encouragement to not improve and not introduce. It’s really allowing for that room. So yes, improve and introduce, but allowing that room to understand that the technology as AI is much more powerful that can really transform businesses, can help you to
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come up with a totally different business models, a totally different cost structure, really reinvent the business. You need to allow that room for that thinking and really kind of creating that opportunity to look at this creatively. What’s the transformational power that you can introduce with AI? Well, and I think it is, it’s such a good point, right? And I like your perspective on you could make it better and improve, but it’s not actually innovation.
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because we always say the dangerous place is when you think it’s gonna solve everything for you, right? And that just isn’t the truth. And even to go to your blog example, right? We’re always like, it’s an and. It still requires the human to say, that our tone of voice? Or is that how we would wanna talk about ourselves? Those kinds of things. But recognizing that to your point, you can write that, know, hundreds of them instead of one in a week, which is where I think it can come into play to be a really good tool for people.
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but I think your point is really well taken that it’s equal or it’s not innovation when you’re just using the tools. Think about it this way, right? So in the experimentation stage of that AI, it’s word we were talking about. We’ll take the low-hanging fruit and automate that, right? So apply AI to that low-hanging fruit. Well, now we did that. A lot of companies, a lot of people, a lot of leaders, they did that. So we kind of understand what we can do on our own.
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Now from the organizational perspective, it’s a totally different question, right? So as a marketing manager writing blogs, it’s very easy for me to automate that. What I cannot automate is copying and pasting of it in all these different systems, accessing the right information from the customer service, from a sales organization, from the engineering organization, so I can come up with better ideas for the content. I cannot do that if I don’t have the tools that organization gives me.
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So that’s the thinking that needs to apply. Yes, it’s okay to experiment on that kind of individual level, but now the question from a leadership perspective, like what do you want to do with it? So we played with the tools, great. There are tons of tools. There will be more of those tools. Most of them are disconnected from the organizational perspective. What’s your strategy? What’s your vision? And that’s the question. How do I see my business given the technology and the ability of that technology now and what is going to be five years from now?
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How do I see my business growing and evolving and being healthy? That I think was a really huge distinguishing factor because I think a lot of people who are using AI in some format think they’re doing innovation. And we applaud everybody who is playing with the tools because even just playing with the tools is a step in the right direction. But I would love for you, as we kind of wrap this up, to give people some
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practical ways that they can really start to think about this idea of, and this culture of innovation. You gave a couple earlier, but I’m kind of bringing it back. I want to bring it back through so we can have a really nice bow around this. So if you can give them like those, those practical like advice, that practical, those practical tools of like, okay, I want, I’m in, I want to start this today. What can I go do? And then on the other side of that, if you could say, okay, from based on what you’ve seen, when people get all excited and they go back home and they start to,
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like try to do this, what like gets in their way. So if you can hit both sides of that coin, I really appreciate it. So the first one, I want to repeat what we talked about, right? So the small steps, when you go back to your office or you you listen to this podcast and you’re all like, yes, I want to be innovative now. Start small, right? So break one silo. Don’t think that you’re going to reinvent the whole organization right now, but break one silo. There’s one particular customer driven problem that I want to solve and
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bring the group of people together, that they can by different sides of this conversation and different solutions from that ecosystem. It’s almost like you’re recreating the ecosystem within an organization. The second one is run that experiment. You have solutions, run one experiment, and maybe it’s an experiencing with a new AI tool. It is an experimentation. But don’t do a sec, I’m going to play with it and I’m going to forget about it, but actually collect data.
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I like data, this is what helped, this is what didn’t help, this is the places and minuses. That’s it becomes an experiment, that’s it becomes the lesson, and from there you can pivot, right? So pivot to whether continue using that tool and integrating somewhere, or discontinue using that, or maybe continue writing experiments at different level. So that’s the innovation process that you can implement right now and really understand that that’s moving you toward that changes in innovation.
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you know, that mindset that we’re talking about, we’ve all been to this meetings when you when you go to the meeting and then you’re trying to solve a problem. And there’s always a few people said, well, what can we do, right? That it’s not going to work. You know, this is the way it is to change that. And so take it, take the ownership of this question and say, yes, we understand what’s going to happen if it doesn’t work. But what can we talk about? What can we change for it to work?
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Right. So that’s a totally different conversation. And that’s the mindset shift. And to your last points of what gets in the way, I’ll give you another pointer of doing something. Stop doing one thing that it really drains you because that’s what gets in the way. You know, we have our routines, we have our rituals, we have the things that we use to, to, to, to doing. And we think that that’s important. And when you continue to take time,
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to reconsider all the things that you were doing and reevaluate them. Are they worth continuing? Or is there something that you can drop and replace with a new value creation activity? That’s great. That’s cool. Thank you for that. think those… So the question we always ask is what must be true? So we have a very similar mindset of when people get stuck in that.
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It can’t be done. We’ve done this before. It’s going to cost too much. It’s like, well, all those things could be true, but what must be true in order for it to actually happen in order for it to actually come to fruition? And it gives people a different mindset of looking for the opportunity versus always getting stuck in the pessimistic view of how things can go wrong all the time. Right. So I love that. We definitely share that. Before we let you go, are you open to some rapid fire questions?
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Let’s see. That’s the best answer we’ve ever gotten. Yeah, let’s see. Let’s see. All right. So the first one’s very easy. So it’s what are you reading or listening to right now? Oh, I am listening. I’m a fan of the diary of a CEO. And that’s what I’m listening to religiously. Love that. Okay. Where’s a place you have been that is underrated in your opinion?
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I spent three years during COVID in Bali. And at that time. I just watched you pray love so I’m vibing on. Yeah. So and I think it’s overrated from a tourism perspective and underrated on the value that it can provide for you to re-energize to really see the world and the culture in a totally different way. I love that. Whose job would you want for a day?
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I wouldn’t change my job or anything else. That’s where I am. I feel happy to be where I am and I wouldn’t give my job to anyone else. I wouldn’t take anyone’s jobs. Okay, so let me, I’ll reframe and say, who would you like to shadow for a day then? Who would you like to go and like shadow for a day? I would love to shadow Microsoft CEO, Fadi Nadella. I’m a big
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I’m a big proponent of the learner’s mind, the growth mindset. And I really love the way he applied that concept with an organization, the culture of the organizations on it. It would be fantastic experience. That’s a good one. Good one. All right. So Dr. Victoria, anything else to close this out? Anything that we missed? Anything that you want to kind of wrap up and make sure the listeners really got? And of course, tell people where they can find you.
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Yes, so what I want to say is that innovation is not really a philosophical concept. This is something that we do every day. There’s an action that you take every day. So yes, we’re talking about the structures and processes and how everything needs to come together with the values and incentives and everything, but actually the action of individual person every day.
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that makes innovation happen. So wherever you are in the organizational structure, whether you’re a CEO, whether you’re president, whether you’re a project manager or whether you’re an individual contributor, there’s something that you can do every day that will actually push that innovation forward. That’s how the culture happens. It doesn’t happen in vacuum. It happens through the actions of each and every person. So you can take agency over that, right? I choose to be innovative. I choose to follow those innovation principles.
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So that’s what I want to do that really leadership starts with that self leadership and commitment to action to innovation. And then on where you can find us, the Silicon Valley Executive Academy, SV executive academy. And if you like the topics that we discussed today and you want to kind of learn more about the emerging technologies and innovation culture, you can also sign up for our newsletter, Innovation Insight, right on that website. Awesome. Thank you so much for
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Joining us and sharing your wisdom on this, think it was very helpful to provide some tangibility to the whole idea of innovation culture and what innovation actually means. And with that, we encourage all of our listeners to take at least one powerful insight you heard and put it into practice. So many today. Remember, Strategic Counsel is only effective if you put it into action. Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further? Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com. We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business.
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