WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. We're talking about innovation looking at what it means and how the word is being used once reserved for the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford. Today innovation is up for grabs. Procter and Gamble deploys it to promote a new line of toothpaste. Campbell's uses it to describe new super flavors. The Wall Street Journal reports that more than 250 books with innovation in the title have been published in the last three months in being so an innovative with how we use this word. Are we losing sight of what innovation is. Are we fooling ourselves that improvements make overs and an entrepreneurial spirit are synonymous with life changing inventions. From there we talk to the artistic director of the Boston Children's Chorus. He and the chorus will be performing at the upcoming TED Talks in Boston. Up next the innovation paradox and a musical TED talk. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying the Federal Reserve will be meeting the

next two days to determine what steps if any it should take to address the US's solo economic recovery and the threats posed by Europe's debt contagion. U.S. stock futures have moved higher at last check the Dow was up 121 nearly 1 percent to twelve thousand eight hundred sixty three Nasdaq gaining 1 percent it's a twenty nine thirty one in the S&P 500 also up more than 1 percent at thirteen fifty nine. J.P. Morgan Chase's chief executive is back on Capitol Hill this time to face a barrage of questions from members of the House about the banks more than two billion dollar trading loss. Jamie Dimon warned against overreacting to the latest setback noised days is the best. Widest deepest most transparent capital market in the world to have flaws. We should fix the flaws. We're concerned about some of these things making us not the best kept them works in the world. Time address a Senate panel last week. Wildfires across the West have driven hundreds of people from their homes including nuns living in a monastery and Boy

Scouts at a campsite. Despite the hot dry weather in Colorado firefighters are reporting progress on a 900 square mile blaze. Erin O'Toole of member station KUNC reports it has destroyed one hundred eighty nine homes. Firefighters have been up against gusty winds and near 100 degree heat as they battle the fire burning west of Fort Collins. However stick with Incident Command says while Monday was a good day with little growth. Stronger winds in the forecast remain a concern. You can see from the amount of smoke that gets created by the wind that goes through the canyons and the valleys. There's there's a meeting there that needs to be secured. The lightning sparked wildfire has been burning for more than a week and is now the most destructive in Colorado history. For NPR News I'm Arun O'Toole in Greeley Colorado. A Pakistani court has ruled that the country's prime minister should be removed from office because of a previous contempt conviction. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports the courtroom was packed for the

latest development in a long running legal drama that has gripped the nation. Judges said to use of the Golani was disqualified from office and there was now a vacancy for prime minister of Pakistan. That disqualification was back dated to April 20 6th when Mr. Galani was convicted of contempt. The verdict means more political uncertainty here at a time when relations with the United States are in crisis. But the ruling Pakistan People's Party should have the necessary majority in parliament to elect a new prime minister. There's already speculation about who may fill Mr. Galani shoes. He and the president Asif Ali Zardari have been meeting senior party colleagues to discuss their next move. That's the BBC's Orla Guerin reporting from Islamabad. You're listening to NPR News. From the radio newsroom in Boston I'm Judy Ewell with the local stories we're following. It appears that a contentious labor dispute at the Pilgrim power plant may

be almost over management and the union representing workers at Pilgrim have reached a tentative contract agreement. Union president Dan Hurley said in a statement that the contract has important protections for the workers. Entergy executive Robert Smith called the four year deal fair and equitable. The rank and file will have their say tomorrow. The mayor of Cambridge wants to prevent people from super sizing when they order soda or other sugary drinks in city restaurants. Mayor Henrietta Davis asked the city's health officials to make a recommendation on limiting beverage sizes to the city council. Davis says there is a proven risk of obesity and diabetes from oversized beverages. City council has referred her proposal to its health subcommittee. In Rhode Island the education commissioner Deborah guest is recommending that a Charter High School in Providence be closed because the student's math scores are low and there are problems with the leadership. Commissioner guest is urging members of the Board of Regents not to renew the charter of the Academy for career exploration when it expires after the 2013 school year.

Support for NPR comes from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation helping NPR advance journalistic excellent excellence in the digital age. Support for political Web coverage on WGBH news comes from Century 21 offering Century 21 Asians in sports the Red Sox return to Fenway Park today for a nine game home stand. It starts with a three game set against the Miami Marlins Bucholtz will head to the Hill for the Sox. Well have overcast skies this afternoon with highs in the 70s. Clouds overnight lows in the 60s. Clouds and sun tomorrow. Highs in the 90s and we may see highs in the 90s through the end of this week. Right now it's 72 in Boston. I'm Judy you'll you'll find more news at WGBH news dot org. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley. We're talking about innovation innovation was once reserved for things like the printing press and the telephone. Today we see the word innovation

tossed around everywhere from the corner office to the corner store. My guest Scott Scott Birken has a lot to say about innovation as a buzzword Scott welcome. Thank you. Happy to be here. Now you say the word and the concept of innovation is in danger of becoming a cliche. I think it's already a cliche. Wow. I mean the word gets. Well I'm a writer so I know about words and I know that the dictionary is filled with hundreds and thousands of them. They're all free to use and there's no licensing bureau to say when you're misappropriating a word and when it comes to people selling a product they're going to use the best possible word to put their product in the best possible light regardless of whatever bearing it has on the reality of the value of the product. So it's past the point it's well past the point and you can go back just a few years words like paradigm shift or breakthrough or transformative game changing there's all this jargon that's been used for a long time to inflate the value of people who are trying to sell something. But Kevin BOWLEN You made a name for yourself in a career based on innovation I thought

innovation the word means something the concept means something it does. We focus on innovation really as something new that has impact. So it's not just a new concept it's not just a shiny object a new idea but really something you can take out their impact and influence the lives of others. Whether it's a new idea a new product or even a new business model a new way to approach accessing goods and services around the world. That's really what's going to inspire organizations to continue the innovation model going forward that we have now Campbell Soup saying they're innovative with soup flavors that doesn't see to be quite what we mean by innovation. I'm going to agree that innovation in the hands of marketing people can be a dangerous term and I spent some time in the marketing world and and I understand the desire to differentiate in the need to latch on to something new and different and innovation sounds like one of those great action oriented kind of words and CEOs like to put it on posters and hang it up in cafeterias and say we are now an innovative company. And the challenge is it's a lot deeper to really

transform an organization and behave like companies that people want to model themselves after around true innovation and repeatable wins in the marketplace. Often what we find is companies are unwilling to commit to those kind of changes so they leave it to the very surface sea level answers and within you know six months to two years people start to realize they're not serious about it. The enthusiasm starts to wane and they're on to some next great big thing. So pick up on that Scott broken if you will because if we're already had a close shave with the word innovation and Kevin has defined what it's really supposed to mean and it's not just applying the word to some soup flavor it's supposed to mean something else. What what is true innovation look like to you. I think the best way to frame this conversation is to think about value that if I am a consumer and I have a problem that I need to solve I want to buy a product that solves the problem for me. And anyone who knows how to make a good product will be confident that they can solve a problem and the market the product based on the solution it

provides. They don't need to use a word like innovative or transform or they don't need that language because they can say hey you you're the person who wants better mileage for your car. We've built a car that gives you better mileage and can talk specifically about the problem being solved. The problem with all this jargon and a lot of the business school hyperbole that we end up falling into it's very middle management view of the world as a whole abstraction. So the best way to for all of these conversations for consumers for executives for people who work on products who want to build things. What is the value proposition. If you're good at making good products you sell based on the value proposition. If you're bad at making products then you need all the jargon and the hype and inflation in order to try to sell because you're not confident your product actually improves anything. Well here's where it gets sticky for those of us outside of your world and that is some people say iPhone innovative. Others say no not innovative. So. And Steve Jobs apparently said. I was trying to solve a problem using your

language Scott that people didn't know they had. Right. So actually I'll go further than that I think it's a problem that we all had. Most cell phones are hard to use. They had all this power and functionality but it was inaccessible to us compared to a BlackBerry which I used to own apps would take forever to load they were hard to figure out how to use the five or six basic things people wanted to do every day were hard to use. And Steve Jobs was not a fan of the word innovation. He avoided using it whenever was asked about he said we don't care about that we're trying to create great products. I think that's the best one of the best lessons to learn from jobs is his focus on the skill of designing good things said would you call I phone innovative if you I would call it a great product. But I know too much. I know that they didn't invent the cell phone. They didn't invent touch screens. There's a thousand things that they didn't invent and the word innovation is often latched upon or tied to the concept of being new. I don't think most people really care that much about novelty. They care about value. So the iPhone is a great

product. It did change it transformed how people they transformed the market for cell phones it transforms both expectations for ease of use. But I know too much about the history and I try to avoid using that word. I don't want to be I don't want to be guilty of the thing that I criticize other people of OK being a great product is enough it's hard enough to do. I think this is where the language starts to break down. Clayton Christensen who's our cofounder you know site. Let me play the guru of innovation guru innovation. Yeah he wears that mantle proudly. He actually split innovation to two categories. He said there's sustaining innovation which says I'm going to make things just that much better along traditional performance dimensions. In some cases it's very small incremental innovations. Other cases you have a monumental leap forward I would categorize the iPhone as really a monumental leap forward in a sustaining category. It made the cell phone that much more relevant that much better for all the consumers. It garnered huge market share from existing cell phone users but it didn't really bring a lot of new people to the cell

phone market. They just converted from their Motorola phone or their BlackBerry to an iPhone. A disruption would be the cell phone against the landline where you look at emerging markets like India and China where there's not even laying land based telephone lines anymore. They're just putting of cell phone towers. Bringing that disruptive technology to the marketplace even here in the US in a very established market where our landlines are quite good and fairly cheap you still have a number of people shutting off their home phone and converting 100 percent of their cell phones. That's a disruption in the legacy infrastructure base around the landline will cease to exist perhaps within 50 years even as people convert 100 percent of the more flexible beneficial value proposition of the cell phone. So at one time Clay Christiansen defined innovation three ways use it too. One was efficiency innovation which was to make the same product more cheaply. So is that going away now because now we've moved past. No it's very true. It's I can actually be a dimension of either one of those. You can you can make things more efficiently bringing down the price point and opening up a new segment the market that couldn't buy into it. If you think

about just containing the Excel phone example when the first cell phones came out you think about you know Wall Street and him walking on the beach with essentially a brick with a small area coming out the top. You know talk times of seven to eight minutes battery life of one hour. You know subscription fees of seven eight dollars a minute. That was an addressable market beyond the wealthy tycoons on Wall Street and maybe a few you know a lot yacht owners and things of that nature. But as people started to compete more resources are drawn into the marketplace people see opportunity competition and efficiency rises and suddenly you see the marketplace expanding because now you can buy a cell phone essentially for free if you're willing to pay for the you know dollar ninety nine a day subscription usage. So Scott why should we be concerned about people sort of locking onto a terminology and a concept that really doesn't have much meaning now except as defined in very real terms as Kevin as I'm passionate about the idea of progress.

And I think that it's very easy to use language to distract people from what the real goal is worrying about is I have these conversations with people when I speak at events sometimes about whether whether a product is this kind of innovation or that kind is it this category what's the S-curve for it's very analytical and abstract and it misses the goal of does this thing make someone's life better. Does it make the world better. Does it improve the experience that a customer has with the products someone make. Those are the important questions. If if following a particular using a particular word or having a particular philosophy increases our ability to do those things I'm a fan of that language. But most of the time these conversations spiral away. Who really is the core issue. How is this helping. How is this making stuff better our customers happier. If customers are happier that's the thing you should focus on. If you can generate profit from satisfying customers more great then talk about that. But as soon as we start talking about innovation architectures and pipelines of idea evaluation methods and all

the jargon it gets abstracted away from what the real goal is. And so George Orwell a huge fan of talked a great deal about danger is author of 1984 quickly dangerous to the dangerous powers of language and not being careful about when her language starts divorcing away from what the core issues are. And so as a writer I realize that I can do that I have the power to do that if I'm not careful. And anytime I see a conversation spiraling away from what we really should be the heart of the issue I'm going to raise my hand and try to bring it back to the core problem. Well what I think is interesting is that you at one time. We were in the little group at a young age to come up with some innovative ideas for Microsoft which just came out with a product yesterday that some say could be considered innovative though. But i-Pad is already out there but they're going a different way or trying to with their own version of it. Also I think anyone anyone who hears about that is interested in tablets What are they going to do. They're going to go try out one and try out the other and try to determine for themselves which one is better for me. They don't care

who invented it they don't care how original it was. They're going to come up with some of the valuation for it being better and that might be it has more battery life that might be has better applications. And the that's the core primary way these conversations should be at the heart of these conversations is that's really what matters. It turns out when you market a product there's a lot of value in American culture for novelty to be able to say it's the latest new and improved. That's a very cliched and trite way to market a product but it does have some value it does work but it's not tied to actual value. If I tell you something if I went to a store in a restaurant and said I'm hungry I want to sandwich and they said this is great sandwich that's satisfying and healthy but we have this new innovative kind of sandwich. Why would I care unless it's going to be healthier or tastier. And that's really the crux of the issue for me. I have to say that I'm smiling because we talked to a woman who's written a whole book about Americans and their fascination with novelty. And so listeners of the Kelly

Crossley Show know that we we've had that conversation and that is interesting. We're going to take a pause and come back to continue this conversation. And when we come back I really want Kevin to weigh in on what you say is really important in inspiring innovation Cap'n. All right. So I'm Cally Crossley we're talking about innovation it's the new buzzword on the block. But over using it are we losing sight of what true innovation is. I'm speaking with Scott Burke and Kevin Boland. Scott Bergen is the author of the myths of innovation and mine fire big ideas for curious minds. Kevin Bolen is a partner at you know site a Lexington based innovation consulting company co-founded by Clayton Christiansen. You're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH Boston Public Radio. This program is on WGBH thanks to you. And Harvard Vanguard medical

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Coming up at 3:00 here on eighty nine point seven WGBH. Support WGBH right now and you'll be entered to win a trip for two to high clear Castle known on masterpiece as Downton Abbey prize includes round trip airfare from Lufthansa a four night stay at venue stock cross in Newry England and a private tour with brunch at Highclere Castle hosted by the lady of the house Fiona Countess of Carnarvon. For your chance to win visit WGBH Dottore. Context beyond the headlines issues you want to know more about. Stories you'll want to share. News and depth online. At the GBH news dot org. Welcome back to the Calla Crossley Show we're talking about innovation about what true innovation is and how often we use the word to describe upgrades and make overs rather

than life changing inventions. I'm joined by Scott Burke an author of the myths of innovation and mine fire big ideas for curious minds. Kevin Bolen is also with us he's a partner at you know site a Lexington based innovation consulting company. So Kevin Bolen Scott Birken has said you know people are saying the same thing going around and around not addressing what the problem is and you've said that you really have to change. A The questions you ask and get rid of some assumptions to begin down the road toward true innovation. Tell us what you mean by that. Absolutely. So I think a lot of innovation starts with what you're already doing and you look for a way to make it new and improved. Scott was alluding to Campbell Soup you know new and improved soup. Probably not redefining the category with those changes in the process. Well you have to step back is to say you know I can keep serving soup to the people who have always bought soup in I'll compete I'll try to get a little market share from one of my competitors along the way with this new label of this new buzzword. But if I fundamentally changed the definition of soup is it serving a different need for people are they going to

consume it more frequently in categories or circumstances they wouldn't traditionally consume soup in before. Several years ago they did come out with an innovation where it fit inside the cup holder and had a moment like a water bottle style dispenser so you could heat up in the microwave and consume soup on the go. I don't know how many people had a desire to consume soup on the go but it was a circumstance where soup was not traditionally consumed and they were attempting to crack into that market. We think that's critical. Scott even alluded to the word before value proposition. I really think that the success is dependent on your ability to identify those moments and circumstances where people are trying to solve in our vernacular a job to be done. And you step in with a solution they weren't expecting at that moment where they were probably working around it. They had some other compensating behavior that they'd gotten used to or some product that was doing a good enough job but not perfect. And you step in and say you know we identified this is a better need and here's a greater solution for you. And it sounds a little silly but some of those you know midnight TV shows you know Plus if you act now you know a lot of those guys are trying to zero in a

particular circumstance for a certain population of people. And if there's a large enough people who share that challenge they're going to sell millions of those sewing needles that Neal don't lose their thread or whatever the ideas might be. It's when organizations can bring that inside and large companies can execute repeatably in that process that really becomes powerful. I followed a group of Radio Flyer the little wagon people. We spoke at a conference together about a year and a half ago and they were just telling their story and to Scott's point they weren't peppering it with innovation. They didn't set out to be innovative. They just set out to say we're just the wagon people. What else could we be. And they looked around to see what other families were using one of their toy categories were there what challenges they had. And they noticed that younger siblings were trying to ride older sibling scooters little two wheeled scooters and they were having a hard time. And they said well they really want to enjoy the experience of their older sibling but they don't have the mechanics to do it. Why don't we just put a third wheel on the scooter and let's build a quality product around that and to their credit they had that inspiration from

observing which we think is a critical part of the process what the world needs that's not being solved. They saw the challenge of using the adult scooter that wasn't working and they saw that with a simple thing but they didn't just rush it to market. They took their time. They brought in some young children and let them experiment they work multiple designs to get the right combination. The iterated quickly and fast with the product designers watching the kids play there looking for the smile factor. And then they knew they had a winner. You know the consistent products consistently got that feedback. They took it as a retailer and the product took off because parents were looking to say how can I get more of a family experience outdoors and not have the fight over the scooter. Now I have a younger generation scooter a family of non consumers for consumers for both children. Now suddenly unlock their wallets to buy that for the second child. Huge growth opportunity for them that's less than that simple process and that standardization and thinking has led them to create a whole new category every couple of years or rolling out more and more and more products. Following that same discipline. So Sky picking up on what Kevin has said. I noted in a lecture you did for

Carnegie Mellon that you talked about that innovation is not in the epiphany moment. Eureka as Oprah would say. But it happens before or after and part a large part of that is the observation the taking of time to know what are the problems what is the added value all of that before you start down the path. So speak to that and then tell me why that isn't just good business and why is that now considered to be innovative in a way that perhaps if somebody did that five years ago would have been considered that. I think I think the last thing you said is totally true I can't disagree with you it is just good business the word. The key word that Kevin talked about this. The good story that he told about observation and doing design work. The discipline is called Product Design which is an old discipline. It's what people who have made hammers and ladders and who people do carpentry they've been doing design work for a long time. I actually studied design at Carnegie Mellon University and you're taught that the discipline of trying to observe people and using anthropological methods to

observe if you're got what problems are people facing how can we clinically and using research methods capture what the problems are and then how can we sit down in prototype and use different methods for developing ideas from inception and sketch them out in the make prototypes and get data about that and experiment and revise and iterate and create product it's a very old discipline. So your point about isn't this just people doing their job yet is that all these companies we've mentioned so far Apple Procter and Gamble red flier. There are people whose job it is to show up every day and come up with new ideas for products. That's their job. There's nothing magical about it to them. They show up every day and they are probably the least likely people in the world to use the word innovation because they know what they're doing is very simple and straightforward. It's not necessarily easy but the task involves nothing magical about it there's nothing. You need a Ph.D. in innovation theory to sit down and try to develop a new idea for something. And yet we know when both of you can address this that if people don't have businesses don't innovate at critical pieces critical times rather they're just left behind.

Well I think what happens is. Craig Christianson book The Innovator's Dilemma is a fantastic book and it changed the way people think about big business. One of the key insights from the book is once a company becomes He documented something that people talked about for a long time that once a company becomes successful with a new product idea a relatively new idea they build up a whole bunch of infrastructure to maximize profit from it and years and years go by and there's no one left anymore in leadership roles. Who knows how to design something new. They're not around anymore. Everyone all they know how to do is make small optimizations and changes and then they realize they're falling behind their competitors but they've lost the focus on the central discipline of design of creation. And then they scramble around the struggle to try to find other ways to change what has become the company culture but it's often too late. It's natural for us to conserve once we have a great product we want to promote it. We want to get revenue from it want add ons from it and years three years four years go by and there's a whole bunch of people who are now their jobs are based on

protecting the last idea and it's very difficult culturally then to introduce a new idea no matter how good it is. So Scott then and then Kevin then it makes sense if at least if you're going to buzz the word it to inspire people inside to sort of get off the dime to say let's be innovative. Let's get away from just making little changes to what we already got. It's true but but of the fallacy is if I'm the CEO of a company or an executive in a group I probably have the most conservative I have the most power to make that change happen. I can decide we're going to abandon this product line and go with a new one. Super risky thing to do but the only person really has that authority is the executive. Yet it's the stereotype as executives get in front of the company meetings and say we must innovate as if the burden was on all the employees. Most of those employees probably know when their executive says that I've pitched five ideas in the last year. They've all been shot down. I haven't seen a new idea come out of anyone in any key group in the company in a long time yet my executive as

it is trying to persuade us to innovate. When the burden is really on the person who has the power. Well I think I mean this is an excellent point that if you're inside the thing and it's successful I think it's hard to break out of that moment you almost have to have some outside whatever going on just to get it to get it moving Kevin I'm I'm interested in your example of a company that just waited a little too long because part of the innovative process according to what I've read you said is that you must be fast to you've got to be a little quicker can't just drag around you've got to sort of get off the dime. Absolutely. I think one of the traps and Scott alluded to a variety of the traps the big organizations fall into very much an over orientation an emphasis on the core business you know operating that business to maximum efficiency. They don't keep their head up they don't look around to see are people shifting away from me. Is there another category that they're moving towards and you can't wait too long. I worked last year with a textbook publishing company. So this is a business that you know in the last hundred years has not been fundamentally challenged. You know we all grew up with

textbooks in the classroom. There's a very structured cadence on when they're purchased in which states lead which purchase cycles and how many states you'll get if you win Texas in math etc. and they had an incredibly efficient optimization engine they were a top competitor in the space they had great authorship great call quality content and they missed the boat as the i-Pad started to emerge and the threat of the i-Pad wasn't that textbooks could now be on digital format versus paper. They could do that. They can convert their stuff to digital That's not the challenge. It's that the i-Pad allows people to interact in a different way. And what the range the major threat they were facing was the threat of their sales dominance. So when your top two or three competitor you've got a seat at the table at the large district competitions and if you won one of those you want a number of them after that. The i-Pad is not released to high school students and there's somebody selling a geometry app for 99 cents direct to the student. Students start to download it goes viral. Friends start to use it saying well I got an A on my test because of what this app did for me it was

fantastic. Suddenly the head of the math department looks up and says Geez 82 percent of my kids have paid for this app. You know we should just give it to all the kids it's only a dollar a copy it's much cheaper than buying another book. Now the sudden the person who did geometry goes that department head and says Hey I noticed you're using my geometry up. I've got a new app for you it's called Algebra 2. And let me buy it at the district level. So all the sudden the i-Pad is now the sales channel the iTunes store the apps opportunity allows all these independent developers to get a seat at the table. Suddenly now 70 percent of the math department is all using apps. Am I going to purchase another hundred twenty dollar copy textbooks for the entire district. No. Why do it. Yeah. So that's where the disruption comes into play. You have to acknowledge that threats that look small and meaningless and you people look at and say that's not good enough. My best customers look at that. They would never use that. They look kind of look down on that application. That's the danger moment. It's when you dismiss something too soon and you say by allowing them to seed in when a certain segment the

market I find unattractive to compete in. I'm giving them a foothold. I'm giving them small profits that they can reinvest in their business and they're going to continue to expand. They're not going to rest on their laurels. They're not going to be happy with the $300 they made on geometry. They're going to try and make more money in other areas and chip away at my business until such a point where I don't have much business left. And that's where you can't get out from underneath. So give me the three both of you the three things that must be in place to have an innovative culture in a business. What what three things. Scott if you want to start that it's got to be there even to have an I'd hope of a process happening in the company. The first thing is you have to have a small group of people that are driving the creative work. When you have 50 people in a room trying to agree on the product direction or the ideas they're going to be followed. It's just too many cooks it's a very simple cliché thing but it's very true. You know a small group of people who are going to have. We're going to be capable of developing enough intimacy working together and trust that they can develop ideas quickly seen a small creative team that's

empowered. The second thing is the word trust is that most people in most work environments really don't trust each other very much. Most working parents are dysfunctional. This leaves two factions with three factions of people that are warring over territory and turf. So the whoever's in charge has to build environ with a lot of trust. If you have trust and have a small group of people good work will be produced. And the third thing is you need leadership that's wont to take risks to do anything new or do anything different requires some risk. If I have a great idea for how to reinvent your radio station and it's a really great idea yeah but if I were listening if I did and half the staff thought it was awesome we have all the people who have a lot invested in the old idea and I have to be willing as a leader to whoever the you know the producers and the executive producers that be willing as leaders to take a risk on a new idea. And that's leaders who are willing to take risks are rare. It's much easier for a leader to sit on their laurels there at the top of this empire to just do what they've done before for them to be willing to make a big change. So the

three things our small team trust and leaders who can take risks. All right from you Kevin. So similar maybe a little bit of reverse order. I completely agree with the leadership mentality has to start from the top. We've worked with a number of frustrated middle managers who had a small bit of budget and they were experimenting and they set up the small team of they came up with the breakthrough idea but they couldn't get any traction for it. And the challenges even at the top some leaders might sit there and say here's $50000 go see what you can find out about that idea which is great except if the idea truly is good they're going to come back and ask for $500000 and then five million dollars and then a 50 million dollar marketing budget and eventually you're talking real money and the leaders at the top will step back and say whoa you know five hundred thousand dollars in this strange little thing was OK but now you're talking about taking money away of my my core business and I just don't think this is a good direction for us. Well now you have someone who's nine months invested in this. It's a crushing defeat for that team it's very challenging you need the leaders to truly and sincerely buy into the belief that they need to be doing this at a systemic level within the organization and really bake it into the strategy. In many ways they need to be

somewhat dependent on what comes out of that innovation engine in order to hit their growth targets otherwise they won't give it the care and attention that it truly needs. The second thing I think you need and we talked about a bit earlier is that the true market insights. You can't walk around the hallways of your own company and rely on third party pie chart data to tell you what the world truly needs. We've had more than a few clients who hire us and they've used other consulting firms and the first thing they do is they walk us down to security and we get a badge and they take us to our conference room that we're supposed to use as a war room for the next three months and and we tell them we're not going to leave the room and they said no no no you know we can get you a bigger room if you need a bigger room we said no we're not going to be here that much and they said well why. We said well do you know the answers of what you need to build next and they said no that's why we hired you. Then why would we hang on your building. We're going to go take you to the consumer. We're going to go observe people we're going to talk to them in their environments and see what they need to get done and then we're going to bring those insights back and start to develop it in those small team settings completely agree with Scott's point. And the third thing I think is a build on what he was saying as well. You need to have the freedom to experiment. You're not going to get it right the first

time and you have to acknowledge that you're going to be more wrong than you are right with your first direction on many dimensions. You might have the most brilliant product idea but your pricing scheme is all wrong. New distribution strategy is all wrong. Your sales team rejects it because it doesn't fit with their commission plan. All these challenges are going to have to be overcome and knocked down one at a time and you can't forecast what they all are at the beginning. Give yourself the opportunity to step back and say well what do we learn from that. Does it completely kill the idea meaning there's no way forward. If it is great. Put it on the shelf. Record the learnings and make sure no one else does this again. If you look at and say wow that's going to be hard to overcome until these three other things change. We just say put the idea in the refrigerator take it out a little bit later when the timing is right. If everything's lighting up green and all the assumptions are proving true just go as fast as you can capture that market as quickly as you can because the market won't allow a good idea to go on noticed for too long. Someone else will step into that void. That's my guest Kevin BOWLEN He is within outside a Lexington based consulting firm. You're what you're heading toward is something that nobody wants to hear in the same sentence with business which is failure.

And I actually had a couple of young entrepreneurs come in they set up a website to talk about failure and that's really the best innovation. And you're both nodding. So Scott I'll let you pick up on that but you know fear of failure stops a lot of this stuff. Failure is a loaded word in our culture it such as it's a final ring to it. You failed the game's over and you're done. But if you're doing anything that's ambitious it's really arrogant to believe you can get it completely right the first time and the history of innovation. Most of what the stories we know are the tail ends we see them retroactively something became successful and now we're telling stories about how it was made and those stories are very heavily biased to making it seem very simple and we like the notion the romantic notion that there was a genius involved who had a flash of insight as you mention before flash of insight that was all just done. We really like that romantically. But you can look at the history of any invention you could pick anything iPhones out you know software web browsing you could pick anything. And if you go and read about the period of time that inventor faced before they had that successful

invention it's just a litany of try this didn't work tried this didn't work. And what Kevin mention is entirely spot on is not just the failure part. It's that you're willing to try if you take the risk it doesn't work out. And then you evaluate what can I what can I learn. So that my next attempt my next experiment I love the word experiments a fantastic word. How can I make it so that what I learn from this experiment makes my next experiment have a slightly higher chance of success. And having that attitude towards learning and lessons and recognizing it's the only way you can achieve these ambitious goals. That's really the lesson to come out of failures is the failure word. It's not just failing isn't good enough I can fail a million times a day not make any progress. It's recognized that once I fail I have the potential learn something. So I'm now smarter my next failure will be a little bit less complete of a little bit of success and that I can fuel and learn from before we close out I'd love for both of you to give give me your idea of what's the greatest innovative thing that's happened recently.

Space X is one of my favorites. OK privatized space exploration. I think the whole idea of trying to the challenges of doing that in a in a private environment and having the whole shift of what we once believed had to be done through government funding and that the commercial and business challenges of that as well as the technological challenges I think is fascinating and I recently had a big success. So they're one of my favorite stories. All right that's got broken. Kevin Bolen Yeah I mean not to sound too cliche but I do think we're just scratching the surface of what these new tablet technologies are going to do when you look at the learning styles that it enables for one teacher in front of multiple students to deliver a variety of different experiences and my favorite innovation going back through history which we used to have on our website before we did a redesign was the printing press you mentioned earlier just looking at what it enabled so many millions of people to do through so many different generations just to unlock and share knowledge I think we're just scratching that surface now with a tablet I think we'll look back on this 100 years from now and say that was a transformative moment for the world

in terms of how we shared and learned. Well you do feel free to drop us a note about what you think would be an innovative talk show program. Yeah I know. Take that under advisement. Thank you so much for talking to us today about innovation in general. I've been speaking with Scott Burkett and Kevin Bell and Scott Bergen is the author of the myths of innovation and mine fire big ideas for curious minds. Kevin Bolen is a partner at you know site a Lexington based innovation consulting company. Thank you both so much. Coming up we talk to the artistic director of the Boston Children's Chorus. The conversation continues on eighty nine point seven. WGBH Boston Public Radio. Funding for our programs comes from you and fruit lands museum discover the heritage nature and art of New England at fruit lands museum in Harvard mass and the

Concord band performs in our economy use it every Thursday evening in July. More information at fruit lands dot org and Skinner auctioneers and appraisers listen to WGBH radio and watch The View GBH television for all my adult life. Steven Fletcher executive vice president and we find that our audience tends to be made up of people who are also listeners and viewers of WGBH and we thought it's a perfect fit for us. We're targeting the right people to learn more visit WGBH dot org slash sponsorship. Former Major League pitcher Bob Wright said he's lived with pain in his left arm since he was 12 and started pitching in little league. On the next. He talks about the glory and pain of pitching. Also part two of our interview with Sandor Katz about fermenting foods and beverages join us. Afternoon two point seven. If you have a vehicle that no longer works for you put it to work for

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KING He's the artistic director of the Boston Children's Chorus. Anthony Tracy welcome. Thanks for having me. Now with a nod to my four I guess who just left the building. Some say that the Boston Children's Chorus is quite innovative in its approach to not only singing but beyond that. Well that's what they say I don't know if it's true but we certainly try and do something different with our rehearsals and and everything that we do actually as an organization. Well talk about what the Boston Children's Chorus is because it is more than just a singing group. Absolutely Well the boss chose chorus was founded in 2003 by Hubie Jones who's a social worker here in Boston who's done many amazing amazing projects. And the goal of the organization is to use music as a catalyst to create social change. So we are we are obviously a chorus and we sing and that's very important to us but we use that and music education as a way to get at building community within the city of Boston and we start Of course with our singers but we hope to expand it to their families and then ultimately to the city at large.

Well he beat Jones for those who don't knows. A person of some note here in Boston and long been in the work of social justice and expressing it in many different ways was inspired by seeing that Chicago's children's chorus. Yes that's correct he was out for City Year in Chicago and he saw what they had in Chicago and and thought that Boston needed something like that here. And what he realized over the last you know nine years will be going into our tenth anniversary season next year is that this is one of his few organizations that actually does what it says it's doing. As far as bringing diverse communities of folks together. So Anthony King you were not the first conductor of this chorus this chorus had been going a while what attracted you and we should learn a little bit about your background because my goodness you've been everywhere performing and conducting both orchestras and choral groups. And I'm I'm just amazed that we get you here to be sure. Well I was honestly I was very happy with my my previous jobs in Nebraska. But when I received a phone call I was a little bit reluctant to take it and to answer it and

but I looked at what the organization was about and it really intrigued me to do something a little deeper with music but yet having art as a strong focus for the organization was really important to me and also the organization itself is put together so well I think that's one of the beauties of what Hubie did was set up a fine arts organization from the ground up with such a solid structure so the support is there to do great work. Most the arts organizations children's arts organize organizations in particular were founded by a conductor and with very little experience and running you know a nonprofit so the set up and how it grows is perhaps stunted this one is grown tremendously. So when I you know was here for my interview and audition you know meeting the all the huge staff and how well the staff works taking a look at you know the under workings of the organization and of course sitting now with you can sell you anything so. Yes. Did you know that that really did it for me and made me want to come here and move I thought was a great

opportunity and so I decided to take it and one so mission driven We should note that the chorus are recruits from the inner city specifically and from communities that some might describe as under-served. Right that's correct yeah. We certainly we try and get the entire range of the socio economic you know spectrum if you will. So we primarily recruit obviously in the urban urban districts and lower income neighborhoods. But we what we really love is the mixture between the lower income folks you know middle class and upper class and giving them all in a room together because I think that class is a very hard boundary to traverse. And if we can get them in a room together feeling comfortable with each other and actually the surprising thing is that it works. You know even I was I think we all are skeptical when you hear about these sorts of things that really really work. But it does it does at such a deep level that you know the singers feel like they can be themselves there and they're finding different ethnicities that they're the same and you know it's just one

of the wonderful things to experience. You teach them not current music but some might say old fashioned music and a variety. Of music I want everybody to hear just a little bit of this piece called suite de Lorca. It's by a Finnish composer whose name I cannot pronounce you can tell me. And oh Jani rotavirus All right here's a piece from sweet the Lorca. O O. O O. O O was was. So you yourself that ground so much of this international music but we're talking about.

With no music background for the most part right and certainly didn't think they'd be singing anything by a Finnish composer. That's true. How do you make that happen. You know I just believe in the no boundaries no limits and honestly I'd like to throw things at them and see what sticks. And I'm surprised that more than a lot of it just sticks that they really love that piece and particularly you know the Federico Garcia Lorca his poetry is so dark. Right. The collection is a lot about death and smelling blood and things like that and bring heavy topics to kids I think is cool because they deal with it all the time but never really in a structured environment right so their lives are very complicated. So why not take some of that complication and bring into rehearsal and have discussions over it so you know bringing in music from different cultures allows us to open the door to have conversations. So a lot of times our rehearsals will stop and we'll have we'll talk about racism and we'll have a 40 minute discussion on racism. Now we're very busy we do give you know 40 or 50 performances a year. We really don't have time to be discussing racial racism. But you can't

give up those teachable moments. And so when they come up you have to pounce on them. And ultimately it's it's even more important because the more that we develop the kids the you know the more culturally aware they are the more connected they are with each other the better leaders they are. They'll certainly excel at music they'll bring it to the music so. And once it's selfish you know because I'm lazy and I wonder how much more it is possible. But on the on the other sense it's all about youth development and you know if they go off into music and study music that's great but if not that's fine as long as they become contributing adults. That's my guess Anthony treats a king He's the artistic director of the Boston Children's Chorus and we've been listening to them perform. We're talking to you this week not just because the Boston Children's Chorus is great but and your work is great but you've been tapped to do a TED talk which is quite a prestigious thing and that's by virtue of who you are and the work that you've been able to do with these young people. And I think that's you must be very excited about it and that's amazing for a lot of people to get an

even bigger understanding of what the Boston Children's Chorus course is all about. Yeah it's it's scary for me quite frankly because it's something that's so out of the norm of what I what I do normally my back is to the audience not my front. And when I speak you know I certainly speak very sparingly when I'm on the podium so this will be certainly something different it's a great honor. You know I don't know why. You know I was chosen but I certainly you know appreciate you know the honor that it is and and it should be hopefully it's interesting. Well we're always going to be interesting. I'm not I'm not worried about that. We should note that as you said the purpose of this is not just to sing but to really. Look. Point them toward social justice. So are there the life lessons that are broader than singing that you'll be talking about in your TED talk about how this all comes together for these kids. Certainly I think that that's to the very essence of my TED talk and I obviously won't deliver it here you know. But to me it's about connection and human

connection and I'm very fascinated with that. And you know how these moments however short they are that we are able to connect with each other how they can have these profound effects on us and and we have to be really careful on how we we treat other people and how we perceive other people to allow them to be their best selves. So that's sort of what I'm talking about in the TED talk and that's I think to the essence of what we do at least within the rehearsal. The Boston children's courses allow people to be themselves and allowed everybody to connect with each other on such an intimate level. And you know it's really it really is magical I sit back sometimes and look at the rehearsals and look at the community that we've created there. And I'm I'm very proud of that. You know we would have to sing a note. But the community itself is is really neat to see and how connected they are not only with themselves but with the community at large their willingness to do community service the willingness to tackle how hard topics like suicide prevention or homelessness you know that that is special that's unique I think particularly in an arts organization in

which you know you know music is a focus. Let's hear a little bit more from this wonderful group the bus and children's chorus now this piece is Isaiah from Jackson Berkeley's thoughts and remembrances and one thousand ninety six. How do you begin. I mean I just can't imagine teaching kids with. Not much musical inclination to sing and weep. I want to make a point that that what is called the Boston's Children's Chorus is are several actually

choruses So you have a mini group right underneath an umbrella. That's correct. It the beginning next year will have 12 different choir semi in four locations around the city of Boston so we're very very proud of its growth. It started with just 20 kids in one choir and now it's going to be around 500 in 12 choir so it's grown quite a bit and you're right that the vast majority of our singers particularly between ages of seven and 10 they come to us with little to no music background and we know that going into it so we gear all the music education all the rehearsals toward getting them up to speed as fast as possible. And for us it's about teaching them skills and not necessarily a collection of songs. So we want them to have something musically speaking about music specifically. Set of skills that they can take on with them so that they will always be able to be able to read music at a certain level and understand music so that they become you know appreciative of the art form beyond just knowing a couple songs who will forget the songs but hopefully the skills will will stick with you so it's a pretty intense process but we

try to have a lot of fun while we're there and enjoy it as we go along. I saw the documentary done when you when one of your courses was in Jordan you were traveling the world right. These are kids it's fair to say mostly probably hadn't been to Wellesley or Rhode Island and there they are traveling the world doing something they probably never thought of doing. That's right. Yeah. You know we have such a big part of what we do and we tour within our city within our state within the region the United States and then of course the world. But the lessons that they learn on tour. You can't get that in place else because they're with us 24 hours a day and all the responsibility is on them unlike when you're at home. You have a parent as a safety net now of course we're not going to let anybody fail or get lost in the desert of Jordan. But you know the responsibility to get up is to keep your room clean all those sorts of things we play solidly on their shoulders and they accept it I think. I think particularly the youth they crave responsibility but we're too afraid to give it to them because we're afraid of letting them fail. And failure is such an important thing.

It's pretty good in the learning process and allowing them to fail is such an important thing and and we're not afraid to allow them to fail. There's consequences and they learn from it and then they hopefully don't repeat the same mistakes. Your graduates have been transformed to have some of them come back now and said Wow what an experience for me. Yes actually we've had lots of folks come back they come back quite often in fact there's an intern here at WGBH that is one that is one of our former students. So you know we this year it was our first year to have college graduates on their progress with a couple of our old students graduate from college and it's the first time ever. We're very excited they've all been successful so far. College rate is one hundred percent so 100 percent of the graduates that have graduated from D.C. have gone off to college. So we're very excited about those numbers and also the choir will be so the chorus will be singing with you when you give your TED. That's a that seems to me to be a first. Yeah. That's going to be right there to when I finish my talk I'll turn around and organise a sing and sing a number it's been a great last what's next what's next next year it's our 10th

anniversary and we're very very excited about there's a couple things of which I can't share with you that you don't have to stay tune in but you know we have some commissions coming up performances at The Contemporary Art big performance in November of Jordan Hall our MLK concert which is every year. It's going to be it's going to be big so everything is going to beg. Look at our website posthumous course organ. You know you'll find something you like. Thank you so much Anthony tree sic KING He's the artistic director of the Boston Children's Chorus. This Friday he'll be speaking at the TED X Boston conference and the chorus will also be performing. We're going to out on our Flyaway a traditional Ham by Alfred E. Bromley. I'm composing one thousand twenty nine. Thank you so much. Thank you. To learn more visit WGBH dot org slash County Crossley follow us on Twitter account Crossley become a fan on Facebook. Today she was engineered by Antonio only art produced by Chelsea Mertz will Rowe slip and Abbey Ruzicka are in turn as Sloane Piver we are a production of WGBH

Boston Public Radio.