Innovation can be polarizing. It conjures up coolness and threat, inevitability and unpredictability, attraction and avoidance. Innovation is essential, yet fails more often than it succeeds.
My reaction to a particular, recent innovation reported in local press was to smile. The New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority announced the rollout of contactless payments technology in the New York City transit system — the world’s largest commuter transportation infrastructure. Why my reaction? Back in 2006, I was a member of the team that implemented the Lexington Avenue Subway Trial — one of the first such pilots in the world. We chose a tough but fertile proving ground by focusing on the commuter experience in a huge market with among the longest, and at times most challenging, trips back and forth to work. The pilot was built in a three-way partnership between Citi, Mastercard, and the transit authority. It “failed” — that is, if you define failure as not getting the green light to scale.
When such pilots don’t immediately generate miracle results, the hindsight analyses are easy. We were too early by over a decade. We had the wrong device — a cool but nonetheless limited-use, expensive “fob” that attached to users’ key rings. The business model was built only for bank account holders. And internal resistance in the pre-millennial economy was formidable. But now, with contactless payments becoming ubiquitous, the important rearview mirror lesson is how much better it is to harvest learning and decide next moves to grab a market lead, than to deem such experiments as one-and-done events.
The Subway Trial is just one story, with one set of lessons. This book gives change makers in any organization dozens of hands-on ways to learn from real experiences, so they can take insights about market needs from napkin back to viable businesses that deliver impact.
In my first career I held a series of executive-level marketing, digital, and innovation roles at big brands. Seeing the possibilities to effect greater change, I launched a new career helping leaders do what needed to get done to move businesses forward. My passion became working with change makers to create new value and growth amidst the rapid change and rising complexity that is everywhere. My board, advisory, and consulting work led to research with dozens of founders, investors, corporate innovators, and thought leaders. I decided to write The Change Maker’s Playbook, bringing together these remarkable individuals’ experiences, along with my own, to benefit and inspire others.
This book is for leaders who want to solve unmet market needs. These people don’t just have ideas. They feel commitment and have a sense of purpose to create new forms of value and growth of benefit to employees, customers, partners, and shareholders. They want to move with urgency, speeding progress by learning from others’ experiences.
The recommendations included throughout have all been tried out in diverse organizations, from global brands to garage-based startups, not-for-profits and privately held high-growth companies. Every recommendation comes from people whose collective experiences will resonate in any company, in any size, sector, or life stage. The common ingredient is that within these organizations there is a change maker who has set out to reinvent products and services or entire businesses, to turn unsolved market problems into opportunities.
The stories of successful entrepreneurs, corporate innovators, investors, government and not-for-profit leaders, and thinkers have been organized in an accessible framework. The framework is rooted in practice, and proven by innovation operators. It does not stop at theory, strategic insights, or ideas. It is packed with tactics that work. That is why this book is the practical guide and indispensable resource for any change maker to keep close at hand. The content’s user-friendly format will help readers take techniques straight into any live innovation setting. The Playbook is organized into three parts according to the Seek, Seed, and Scale framework.
Part I, Seeking, starts with what it means to discover insights into problems and define purpose to drive value and growth. Too many aspiring innovators jump to create the perfect product for themselves. Maybe they are under pressure to hit a forecast and are bound by internal perspectives. Reality check: Is there a big and deep enough problem in the market, and is there commitment and purpose from the get-go? This section establishes how to find and define what to build, identifying the change maker mindset that will make the difference through all elements of the framework.
Part II, Seeding, tackles the skills, tools, leadership, and capabilities that get concepts to take hold by testing for market interest and feedback. Seeding conditions are different for young, fragile concepts than for those of mature businesses. Seeding requires iteration, to get the right mix of elements. Rough concepts must prove they can be viable, and solve real problems for a scale audience. They are best proven and refined by engaging users in prototypes of how the solution is envisioned to work.
Part III, Scaling, focuses on the last three steps of the framework, and takes great ideas toward the ranks of sustainable businesses, assuring vitality through the future forces of change. Launch spans the days or weeks or months surrounding the “go live” moment. Presented sequentially, but built-in to Launch, are Testing and Experimenting. Finally, the framework ends with new beginnings: Anticipating and Adapting. However great the results, no one can afford to sit still and ignore the reality of future reinvention.
Scaling does not just mean doing everything in a bigger version of what’s happened until now. Scaling is a function of what you’ve been doing bigger, what you’ve been doing adapted, and whole new activities, choices, and relationships. Scaling means a new trajectory. As such, it requires shifts in mindset, approach, skills, and how resources are used.
Each Playbook chapter explains and animates:
The Playbook is not intended to portray innovation as linear, predictably paced or methodically timed. Innovation is dynamic, iterative, and even messy — particularly when viewed according to how businesses used to work. Innovation shifts back, forth, and sideways, and does not look the same twice. What is covered through the framework might happen in weeks, months or years. Steps are uneven, loaded with ambiguity. Progress requires purpose, commitment, new methods, intense execution, and also takes guesswork and judgment in the absence of certainty and hard data. Luck plays a role.
These dynamics are the norm to create an offering, or reshape existing products and services. Repetition of the past is not the recipe. There is no set recipe.
Market problems are tougher than ever to solve well and at scale. To change makers, this means more innovation opportunity. Capabilities are out there, to be applied toward the needs spawned by trends. More data may hold answers to pressing problems. Generational shifts in attitudes and values are opening up opportunities, demographic change is creating demand, and social media and new channel technologies are widening access.
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Change makers are few in number, and are worthy of encouragement and support. They want to create and deliver value, bring together teams to solve big problems, seize opportunities, and make a difference. Treading water is not an option for them. They want to succeed for themselves, their communities, friends and loved ones, and for the broader stakeholder ecosystem. Theirs are hard-won achievements.
Success is happening for those who adopt a new mindset, tactics, and commitment, and who establish their purpose. Following the old script won’t work.
If you see a career runway in front of you, want to commit to innovate with the goal of creating value and growth for stakeholders, and to serve customers by understanding and solving their problems, you will find value in this book. If you are marking time to jump ship, talking the talk about innovation while your head and heart are not walking the walk, this book will make little sense. Purpose-driven leaders, this book is for you. Financial engineers and valuation hypesters, sorry, this book cannot help.
The Change Maker’s Playbook will provide guidance to get from the napkin-back idea to tangible impacts.
Are you ready to be a change maker?
Read on.