 Hi there, welcome everyone and we are here for season 2. I know there's been a bit of a gap but you know what that's always something which is worth, if you are going to get something really interesting there is probably something worth waiting for. So today is that first episode and I hope you are all excited because I'm really looking forward to this conversation with my first guest for the season, who better than Saul Kaplan to kick it off and Saul just you know you've read his bio. So he is someone who's really the founder of the Business Innovation Factory. So that's something that I found really puzzling because here is a guy who talks about a factory and then he also says the scaling up will kill innovation. So I kind of really thought that that was quite interesting but yeah and this is really going to be the crux of our conversation and from there it is going to be many things because Saul really likes to talk about many different things and so do I so you know we are going to end up talking about Heaven knows what. So with that welcome, welcome everyone and I'm so delighted to welcome Saul to this particular show. So Saul why didn't you tell us a little about you know some of the inflection points of your career you know what are those two or three things that really shaped your point of view. Well first of all Abhijit, wonderful to see you. I think Saul just likes to talk a lot. It's really great to be with you, honored to kick off your second season. I really describe myself as a hopeful innovation junkie but I'm very focused on a part of the innovation conversation which is transformation. I respect all of the effort put into incremental improvements and all of the innovation work that makes the way the world works today a little bit better but I think we live in a time that screams for transformation. So my entire life and career has been about how do we make transformation safer and easier to manage, never easy but can we do it systematically and that's where the word factory comes in around fifth right because we need to be able to produce new ventures, new business models and I'm particularly focused on the ones that could actually change society for the better. So I'm happy to mix it up with you today. So you know when people sort of think about innovation and transformation these are words which I used quite a lot and so I always find it worthwhile to ask people when you say you know innovation what does that really mean and what does transformation mean for you? So describe the words and then we'll take it from there. No I think it's important to start there because that's one of our biggest problems when you say the word innovation or you throw out words like transformation right everybody you talk to you know if you talk to 10 people you get 20 different definitions and I don't know how we organize for innovation and get people and capabilities aligned to change the value equation unless we agree on what we mean by innovation. So for me very simple innovation is a better way to deliver value a better way to deliver value emphasis on the delivery. If it's not an innovation to me unless it actually solves a problem in the real world for a human right then it qualifies in my book as an innovation don't confuse it with invention right we invent a lot of things I love that society is very obsessed with inventing new technology new tools and new approaches I hope we never change that but inventing something new doesn't make it an innovation in the real world working to solve problems so I've been very focused on what does it mean to deliver better value and I've always been focused on the business model as what our friend Alex Osterwalder calls you know the unit of analysis we have to learn to think in terms of our business models whether we're a business or any other institution and I actually think we need to think that way as individuals and I'm sure we'll dig into that a little bit. Yeah because you know I've shared you know some of the links I've shared the link of your book and I've shared you know some of the articles and the business model innovation factory the book is there so highly recommend that you guys take a look at this and there are of course you know two articles and I was in particular you know that's what got me thinking that obsession with scalability must end because you know when you think about all startups what do they really think of they don't really think of serving one person they want to say that when is it that you know my product or service is going to be used by everybody if not all around the world certainly all across the country so in my book dreamers and unicorns I talk about you know moving from dreamer to unicorn you achieve that when everybody in your country geographical boundary knows about your product uses the product and you know your product has evolved to be able to sort of encapsulate such a large user base but you kind of seem to disagree with that why. Yeah well first of all what I and I learned this right the hard way right lots and lots of years as a road warrior consultant where leaders in the executive suite bang their fist on the table and said we want to transform you know we right and then they went back to their office and then the teams that we work with over time ended up doing important but incremental things to the current business model not changing the entire business model and one of the major reasons why we don't do transformational things even though we might have the idea to do it the reason it never gets off of the whiteboard is because we're obsessed with scale you start to get questions and we all know these questions right we get 8,000 questions right about what does it look like at scale right what's the return on investment how long is it going to take to get payback right we think we can analyze our way to something transformational I learned the hard way and I had to completely reinvent myself we'll talk a little bit more about this but I learned the hard way that you cannot analyze your way to transformation it's a generative act you have to explore your way there now I learned how to to make predictions and to do fancy spreadsheets in order to get a nickel you know from someone to invest in my projects we all learn how to do that but if you watch entrepreneurs and I've been watching my whole life nobody ever gets their business model right on the first try right even the most successful entrepreneur puts the spreadsheet together tries to raise the nickel right with a fancy plan with numbers about scale in the future and then when it hits the brunt of customer contact it's in the real world right most entrepreneurs I know that have been successful it's the third fourth fifth try before they land on a business model that might be scalable so if we start too soon being obsessed with scale and we have to answer questions to funders and stakeholders about the 8 000 reasons why right I don't think this will work or until you can tell me with certainty what scale looks like I'm not giving you a nickel right when we live in a world then that to do something transformational requires you to imagine it render it in the real world and then worry about scale so there's a time to worry about scale but we can't use it to kill ideas before they ever get off the drawing board so I think we have to put new models into the market and allow them to emerge and it's the learning that we do in the real world and the data we get from that experience that starts to create the evidence or the proof that gives us more confidence to invest more of our time and to invest more dollars in scale so there's a time for scale and share taking right and there's a time for the generative piece where you're trying to bring something wholly new in the world that can actually change society and do something truly transformational and I've been trying to build the tools and the mindsets and models to get more people comfortable with I use the technical term trying more stuff can we get our ideas faster off the drawing board out into the real world so that we can prototype them and see if they start to work and then worry about scale once we have something that's actually scalable instead of sitting back in our offices in our conference rooms analyzing with with decks to the cows come home only to learn that once we put it into the real world it isn't going to work and change the value equation so why did we spend all that time worrying about how to scale it so I think our obsession with scale is getting in our way and killing innovation and then the last thing I'll say on this is I actually think it's worse than that it isn't just stopping us from innovating and putting new models in the world which it's certainly is it's leaving too many people behind around the world because we have this obsession with scale that says one model wins and it's a war to see which one of these models is going to scale you know to be the king of the mountain right that's the world we lived in during the industrial era right and it's been true and those models don't work for everybody and so we leave more and more people behind we need an environment there will always be large models that have scaled but we need the generative process to allow new models to emerge and we have to stop leaning against that or we're never going to get the transformation that I think we all want to need in society and around the world you know one of the questions here you know which has come up here from you know listener question thank you very much for that I mean the question that they're looking at is and I'm going to paraphrase it a little bit the question is that you know is innovation something when you are trying to create value that's necessarily something that's going to take time is that why you should first figure out the value question before you think of the scale question is that what you are recommending well you have to separate it I I spent a lot of time with leaders like trying to get them to think differently about incremental innovation things that we do to improve the model we're already in right the way a business works the way an industry works the way a school works the way a hospital works right that kind of innovation can be more predictable we can do the spreadsheets for those we can side between project a b or c that's what we learned how to do right some do it better than others right but if you want to do transformational work right that will not work because think about it by definition the more predictable it is the more certain it is the less likely that it's truly transformational if it's going to be transformational you have to allow it to emerge and that takes time so we need a different set of metrics on how we make sure that we're making progress towards transformational new business models the existing metrics that we use for incremental innovation don't work we need a different set of skills and tools and I'll talk to you about what I call the three superpowers the things I had to learn to do as a scientist MBA it worked pretty well in that obsession with scale error it doesn't work so well in the transformational error so I've had to learn an entire new set of superpowers things like human centered design rapid prototyping and storytelling and engagement which is what I call the three superpowers of transformation and we can unbundle those because I think they're really relevant to the skills we need as individuals and as companies and organizations and as communities as we try to render the future that we all want to need around the world so I'm going to sort of ask you a sidebar question which is that you know a lot of people talk about an MBA becoming irrelevant is that true do you think that's what it is or is it that MBA needs to itself evolve because businesses and the models are evolving so what is your take on this yeah I mean I've come full circle on this as I as I've reinvented myself right and I've learned about the life skills of reinvention that I then apply to enterprises and to communities but I learned it in enterprises right because I grew up you know working for large companies consulting to large large companies right and so I do think that you can learn to do it but you've got it you've got to approach it differently with a different mindset not sure I answered your question well give me the give me the note of that question again and so you know if you had to really um if you didn't have an MBA would you do it would you sort of invest so thank you I I have an MBA and the superpowers it gave me which well I'm going to talk about new superpowers we need I didn't leave the old ones behind right so that the superpowers I got I needed as a scientist I had no clue how resources and people and strategies moved through companies and enterprises I mean I had no idea what that was about and I had no idea about financial modeling you know and and how to make that work at every scale of an operation so I'm glad I have those superpowers but those superpowers are not the core superpowers necessary to do transformational work to design compelling new business models that have the have the capacity to change systems which is what we what we all want and need so I think it's a both and I often joke if I could do it again you know if you force me right you know I'm glad to have both sets of skills now you know but I'd probably go more towards the MFA you know where I could learn human-centered design and rapid prototyping and how to imagine the future in a compelling way and engage people to involve involve themselves in that future so that we can increase the chances of doing it so I think those things are critical for transformation and I don't see how you get there with just the pure MBA skills now a lot of MBA programs are recognizing that and they're working really hard to change it as are the MFA programs that are coming the other way you know trying to build the analytical organization change management like those kinds of skills you know that are necessary for transformational change so we'll see who wins that race sure and it seems if I were to sort of you know summarize the idea that you talked about it seems that you know earlier the way the world was you know it is the hard skills which is how do you analyze how do you sort of create financial models etc all of that seem to you know give you a competitive advantage in the world of business but now as the world of business itself is changing a lot some of the software elements like you know human-centered design rapid prototyping or storytelling you know these are the software elements that seem to become far more important because there isn't a definitive path and that I think is potentially the shift but you know this was can I can I with with respect you know kind of push back on that um whenever anybody and so you I'm not signaling you out here when any whenever anybody uses the the dichotomy of hard versus soft skills I immediately challenge it you know and if you really get me started we'll have to spend the whole rest of the hour on it right these aren't hard versus soft skills the connotation of that is these are the ones that are important they're the hard skills these are the soft fluffy skills you know that we need over here that's not true they're both superpowers you use those superpowers in order to change the world to build new businesses right to build new business models right and to think of them as hard versus soft I think is the wrong way to think about it I think we have to think about competencies and superpowers that we need in a very rapidly changing world and I would argue that it's what you called soft skills that are the hard skills today and the and the others are really the soft skills that you need to of course we need a financial model right or else we're not going to be able to have the resources necessary you know to scale our models right but you don't start with that you start with what's the proposition in the real world what are you trying to change what's the job you're trying to do for a customer and it's those those skills of human centered design and rapid prototyping and storytelling that's the only way we're going to transform anything so to me they start to look like like harder skills to get and to build and sustain than the skills of analysis and creating strategic insights from lots of data which are important I'm glad I have those superpowers but I really don't I really bristle when those skills are called the hard skills I hope you don't mind no not at all I mean you know because I spent my bulk of my work is really working in the soft skills sort of space because so for me I realize that those are much more difficult to teach you know they are easy to learn because you know learning puts the responsibility on to your own self teaching is somebody else's responsibility and by by weight is the objective to teach or is the objective to have new practices that we can use to innovate and transform with right if the objective is to teach like okay I might debate you on that but but the way to think about this is what does it mean to build a new superpower and I would tell you getting somebody like me who's a scientist MBA to reinvent to someone who's about human centered design right at the at the core right let me tell you that's that might be easy to get me to understand the concepts in a classroom not so easy to do in the real world right reinvention is hard like those skills are really hard to do and yet they're the most important skills and why a lot of innovation isn't happening so well we have one of our viewers frame says I love it when you say superpower you know so he really likes it and yes I mean how do you distinguish between superpower and competency are they sort of used interchangeably or I don't I don't but I'm trying to make it personal right because when I wrote the book I did I fell into the same trap I wrote the first chapters about enterprises right I by then I'd extended enterprises to beyond companies you know to include all institutions because we can come back to this if you want right it isn't just companies that have business models that are straight jackets by design that's what they were designed to do they weren't designed for transformation right and so if you want to reimagine a business model a whole business model not just a component of one right you're going to have to get a lot better at that and that's what I've spent my whole career and life doing and the reason I use superpowers is I made that the last chapter in my book right people have business models too and what I've learned along the way is if we don't learn how to reinvent ourselves right we're never going to reinvent companies enterprises and then we can go up to communities and society it starts with us so superpowers are interchangeable in my mind with competencies they're the power to do something and and superpowers are the most important ones we all have lots of competencies organizations every company I know although what happens when you go into a company I mean I asked them for their competencies never mind superpowers if I say superpowers they you know they throw me out right but if I say if I use the word competencies they they get it right and I asked them to give me a list of their their core competencies and they hand me their org chart and I'm like no I didn't ask you for your org chart I don't want to know your power structure and what functional silos you have you know in your enterprise I want to know what superpowers what competencies you have and you know what most companies can't answer the question they don't have a clear view a shared view of what their superpowers are and if you don't have that how are you ever going to transform your business model because a business model is made up of superpowers core competencies the ones that really drive value and then a whole bunch of enabling competencies like we know how to order paper clips you know for the desk yeah okay we have a a competency to do it I'd hardly call that a superpower that drives value in the enterprise but yet when you get to customer experience and how we put the customer into our business models at the core and how we design to change the value equation for a customer that gets really core and those things are really hard those are the ones that are hard to change most of the early innovation was on the you know how do we buy paper clips cheaper and faster right now we're getting to the real stuff so now it gets interesting Oh when you sort of really think back on your journey you know what got you started about this whole thing about human-centered design because really the crux of and and maybe you know you should explain this for the benefit of all of us that you know when you say human-centered design what does that really mean for you that you start with the customer is that what it is or do you start with the human being you start with a societal issue that you should be looking at what's your initial point so I'll give you a little bit of the context of how I got here so you know again scientist MBA working in corporate America you know playing what a share-taking game even though we talked about transformation right we were trying to strengthen our business model we weren't trying to change the business model right and I kept wondering what is it going to take if we really had to transform or if we wanted to proactively transform to you know reshape the industry we were in we used to use those words a lot in consulting right you know like you know how do we become industry shapers right you know was language that we used for a lot of years so I left industry right and then I was in consulting where all of my clients were large companies and then I came back to my home state here in Rhode Island in the state smallest state in the country and I made the mistake of becoming an accidental bureaucrat I actually went into government right the governor at the time in my state came from the business world and he made the mistake of putting me into our economic development agency first as the number two guy he went back to wall street and then I joined his cabinet and became an accidental bureaucrat it changed my entire view of what innovation is all the years previously I saw innovation through the lens of an enterprise a company my clients for the first time I saw innovation through the lens of the people who live in our community consumers students citizens patients right and I started to think about the business models that these companies and institutions these were business models that have been around a hundred years this is how a university works you know this is how a company in the pharmaceutical industry works or in the drugstore industry like that model you had been developed a long time ago and we've been innovating for a long time within the constraints you know of that model when we live in a world where we need transformation and new business models so I live right next door to Rhode Island School of Design one of the world's you know leading you know design institutes and I have a lot of friends you know that are designers and I watched what they did right you know Mr. Scientist MBA with all my analytical tools and superpowers they had a different approach to problem solving right I watched them see it through the lens of the some of a person right and really understanding their experience and then having the guts to imagine a different model right to help that customer right rendering it in a prototype they they had no fear of rendering low fidelity models of what they were trying to do right and designing it and in an iterative generative way getting to something that was really exciting you know it became and emerged as a new design in the marketplace so I said I need that superpower right because if I had that superpower right combined with my business and science skills I could apply them to design a business model something they weren't doing they were designing all kinds of stuff and I said what if we could design a business model the same way and I started to build the tools and the methodology to do that so for me human-centered design represents a couple of things one what I call changing your lens you will never transform anything if you see the opportunity set through the lens of your current business model you will if you use that lens you will design things that fit into that business model right that straight jacket that that that constrains and controls what how you work right what the rules are how you behave it drives the cultural norms right it's all based on these models that have been in existence for a very long time the first step in any transformation process is to see the opportunity set not through the lens of the enterprise you identify with or you're in right or your profession or whatever your model is but to see it through the lens of someone else and I think the customer is the right anchor right to actually see the lived experience not through the lens of your enterprise that's the only way you're going to see what the real job to be done is not what you think the job to be done is but what they know the job to be done is and what the pain points are in their experience now I can start to imagine a business model but if you do it from the constraints of your current business model right it's not going to be anything more than an incremental change if you want to transform the customer experience you need a new model so you need the conditions and tools you know to do that which is why I always tell leaders transformational change is very different than incremental change in innovation you need to organize it differently and you need a whole different set of tools human centered design is the first fundamental superpower because it gives you the luxury the blessing of seeing the opportunity set in a new fresh way that you don't see when you wear the glasses or the lenses of the way your current business model works so so let's take an application of this idea and when you look at education and you know specifically higher education when you look at it who is the customer who who should it be designed should it be designed for the people who are paying the fee and therefore you know are the customer or should you say that you know they eventually get absorbed into the business world or something if let's say if you're looking at it from the lens of an MBA or a business school or are you sort of taking a broader picture and saying they should be able to impact the society in which the business is operating in which case you know that's a very different lens how do you come to the conclusion which one is right yeah great question great question Abhijit the and I have this discussion and it often takes a very long time it's amazing to me how bogged down we get in that very simple question of who the customer is right because immediately what happens is depending on where you sit in the organization you will say you know particularly in a large enterprise right somebody you know but what they'll do is they'll start naming stakeholders right in the value network right right so and they'll say our job is to you know is to compel this stakeholder group the investors you know the suppliers the distributors I believe that you should center in on who we're trying to solve a problem for the end user and that's the customer right I grew up in the pharmaceutical industry right it's a classic example right you know they're doing a little bit more but they still have a very long way you know to be customer centric in my view right because somebody else pays the bill right because all the other stakeholders are necessary in order to deliver value to the consumer and this is why more and more people are being left behind by one size fits all models we get further and further away from the real customer and what the real purpose is in the first place right of what we're trying to do which is create solutions right for a customer so the pharmaceutical industry is trying to create a solution that's supposed to be for me when I need that to take better care of myself or to treat myself when I get sick but all the other stakeholders in that value network right that that influence that decision maybe control that decision more than I think is necessary when we'll come back to that right I think we've got to get more I think we have to unleash more personal agency right and empower the consumer again and the good news is the technology is emerging so fast and the tools are emerging so quickly that we can organize we can self-organize I think the biggest trend right now and the thing that's bringing institutions to their knees and there are examples of this every week is what I call self-organized purposeful networks self-organized purposeful networks right and it's organic it starts with the end user right and it emerges this way and enterprises have been incredibly slow right to harness this trend and pretty soon that trend is going to overtake them right because we're going to command the tools necessary to organize networks and to map products and services to the experience we want and need so you mean you're absolutely right and education is a great one right to just answer the question more simply the student is the customer I mean that's why we're there other stakeholders are critical right to delivering value right some some things are more critical than they really are when you look at new technologies coming into the marketplace and they're very slow to embrace it right this is why we don't change because people in a business model right or people in a profession that went to school for a very long time to do something right and have degrees from fancy places right think they're the experts right and what we're becoming more expert in our own lives and able to grab the information grab the tools grab the support configured in a way that aligns with our lives and this is the pressure that's going to force large enterprises to transform themselves faster which we which we really need so you know we've got two quick questions and you partly answer the first one which is Sanjeev Seigl wants to know how do we know what the clients want when they're actually used to the legacy working system you know so that's the only thing they have experienced so what is the right way to understand what is right for the client or customer well in my world you use the magic words client and customer right right and so a lot of the work I've done has been focused on trying to help enterprises do the things we're talking about today right my entire life I have every black and blue mark you can possibly imagine trying to convince leaders of very large enterprises right to change to change it all never mind to transform right and there's a whole industry as you know right and the problem I had is I was I my business model the work we did was dependent on enterprises paying the bill to get the services I had to offer right and then I kept scratching my head and saying you know what like they're not adopting these solutions fast enough therefore we're not changing society fast enough so now I'm in the now I'm literally pivoting Biff from sponsored projects we've been in business for 16 years we've done 70 really amazing projects all sponsored by enterprises very few of which made it all the way through the process to a transformational business model that can now emerge in the marketplace and maybe some of that was we weren't good enough but I'm sure a lot of it was the obstacles to change and transformation in the enterprise so we're pivoting from sponsored projects to self-initiated projects now a smaller portfolio projects where we pick a design challenge that we are passionate about solving we use the tools and methodology we've developed over 16 years and we design new ventures right so we're becoming entrepreneurial again we're going to launch new ventures we've got our first one all the way all the way into the prototype phase already it's in the maternal health space it's called Luna you and it's a beautiful design challenge the pain points are so obvious the research and evidence is so clear that unleashing agency and empowering women right to take better care of themselves can create better health outcomes but we live in a healthcare system that wasn't designed for that right it was designed for when we get sick and have disease and heck pregnancy isn't even a disease so we built a personalized well-being platform to enable women to give her the information the support you know and the tools she needs to be empowered to improve her own outcomes and then use the medical system when something goes wrong to be available when there's an emergency right and so we're integrating with the system but we're dropping a new model into the system that is wired differently than the way most businesses are in the healthcare market is it then you know what it seems to me is that if you empower the customer or the consumer the consumer creates a path and then you build a business model around that is that another way of putting it or have I got it all wrong you you identify a challenge right I like to pick the ones that are really systems challenges big complex you know systems challenges and then you understand the experience of the end user in today's system and you immediately start identifying the pain points in that experience this is who they hire today right this is where they go to get product service information right this is what their experience is doing Matt right and there's no shortage of pain points in every one of these social systems whether it's education healthcare you pick the industry we can easily identify the pain points and then we can start to say what's their job to be done how do we now imagine a new business model first conceptually you know so first on the whiteboard but it isn't worth spending you know a very short amount of time these companies that spend years designing something right trying to convince themselves that it'll give them a predictable result it's crazy right they should be taking stuff off of the whiteboard in a napkin sketch putting it into the real world to see if that model could actually render change at a small scale you know before they grow we got to get much faster at doing doing this kind of experimentation which is the second superpower right like I learned how to do it in a big company enterprise market you never do anything unless you have the evidence base that you should do it and you can show the economic returns of what it looks like at scale right that's how you pick between project a b c or d that's how my projects got funded by enterprises that's how projects get funded within enterprises or institutions right but you've got to be able you know to unleash and invest in and and move early stage ventures new business models that represent transformational ways to change it and prototyping is the key difference we're used to doing you know pilots in industry I've got an idea right I've got it out there in a pilot with a you know 100 people and I'm once I put it out there I'm testing that model and how it works with 100 right to get more confidence that I can go to a thousand ten thousand you know 10 million prototyping is different prototyping takes a low fidelity concept off the whiteboard into the real world first it's a low fidelity prototype literally bubble gum and bailing wire right and you're seeing whether your concept of a model could actually work in as close to a real world environment as you can render it and then you once it's working you learn in real time and then in a generative way you start moving to make it work so it's not an analysis to see after a six month pilot did it or didn't it work it's a period of prototyping where you're changing the model on the fly to get to something that works it's a generative design process and it's a real super power because I know from my enterprise life right good luck trying to get permission you know from a senior leader and the resources necessary to do it when your entire model and all the financial metrics and tools are driven towards predictability this is why we don't change our business model so you know when I sort of draw so the image that was coming to my mind when you were describing this is you know when I do let's say I do a sketch note or something so I kind of do a little layout you know with pencil and they're kind of say oh I think the font is too big so if I put this much of space for the title it's not going to leave enough for all the ideas they sort of shift it to the side it looks tilted then you kind of say that okay I've done that I mean I seem to have taken up all the white space so let me just knock off what I can simplify it so it is this iterative process is that you know how it is I love this because it let it takes me right to the third superpower you know which I call storytelling and engagement and I smile because I've seen your graphic illustrations you have a superpower my friend right you know how to take complex conversations and help visualize them that's one of your superpowers not your only one but it's one of them I can't do it right you know like you see if you see one of my drawings you know you'd laugh here's what storytelling and engagement means in the old world it was push marketing top down right we have a department a PR department that controls the storytelling and the messaging you know we have a marketing and communication set of departments they control the messaging both in the organization and out of the organization transformation doesn't work that way transformation works when you can integrate stories that are works in progress right they are visualizations of and all kinds of ways to create a story using different storytelling channels and modes that helps somebody enter the conversation and then you build on it you do graphic illustrations I've seen you do it in several conversations I've been in that picture you create has incredible meaning for those of us that were in the conversation and then it intrigues people who see it to say what was that conversation about I like to be in that conversation and then you use other superpowers you have to kind of reel us into the conversation using other channels now we're having a real conversation organically with people that are motivated to be in the conversation change management for transformation is different than change management for incremental change change management for transformation means you get really really good at storytelling in lots of different formats I don't care if it's music or dance or narrative or drawing pictures right everybody creates an emotional connection to a different kind of storytelling and if you can engage me in the production of the story and you allow me in when it's unfinished business something enterprises hate right because they don't want it to go out to the marketplace until it's gone through eight levels layers of bureaucracy and they approve it in the 21st century everybody in the enterprise is a storyteller everybody uses internal and external channels to share the story through their lens and that's how you grow a movement more than a traditional company if you want your company to feel more like a movement where customers and the community is driving engagement and expanding it right you're going to have to learn the superpower of storytelling and engagement and it isn't traditional marketing PR and comms I can tell you that how did you talk to me about the way you learned the art of storytelling what was that like you know talk to me about the exact process of building that skill yeah so and I approached all three of the superpowers the same way because they literally were human center design rapid prototyping storytelling and engagement where what I call the three superpowers of transformation and it was personal for me the way I got there is the way I get everywhere right I only know and can really understand and act on something when I embody it myself it's got to be personal right because when I make it personal and this is the secret of agency and empowerment right if it's my story I'm going to be a lot more engaged into it than if it's a story that you're trying to shove down you know and and get me to you know to participate in so I knew I needed these new superpowers because I could see that my the superpowers I got from the early part of my career were not working in the transformational space I used to think that you could proselytize to get people to change to something significant right if I just keep talking enough like it's pretty obvious I can you know I can I can talk forever right and I'm reasonably smart and I do great decks right so I thought if I just and and I use what I call the Jewish aunt theory of management right my Jewish aunt theory of management I will nudge you until you change I used to think that I could get you to change with those tools I can't those tools don't work to get people to change the only thing that works to get people to change is when they can see themselves in the story themselves right so I had to learn these superpowers so I'll answer your question about storytelling but it was the same for the other two right and it was hard for me because I'm a classic marketing guy I mean my claim to fame when I was in industry before I went into consulting I worked at Eli Lilly and company right a big pharmaceutical company great company you know still a great company this day in an industry that's been consolidating like crazy right I learned competency thinking starting there they were way ahead of their time in thinking about competencies versus just the org chart but when I when I launched Prozac I was very clear yeah that was my big claim to fame and Lilly I got the opportunity as a young leader to work on the US introduction of a product called Prozac and I usually say that it was successful despite us but it was not a share taking game it wasn't the classic right and analyze our way to the future we it was a market making game right it required these new superpowers right and that's where I first learned this the difference in share taking and market making what does it mean to be a market maker versus a share taker who are the market makers how do I learn that how do I teach others that how do I build you know education and training programs that appreciate this so this has been a through line you know of everything we've done including every model that we design at Biff you know was being uh was was being able to do that and not as a bolt-on to an old model I didn't take these superpowers and just say I'm keeping the same model I used to have to solve problems I made these the core and then I took the old ones and I kept them on board as enabling capabilities I changed the core capabilities which reinvented me by reinventing me I could now start building tools and methodologies and taking on project work to help other enterprises do it and now I'm coming back full circle to say I think we know how to do it I think we can pick our own design challenges and take new ventures out to the marketplace so we can start to see these kinds of changes happen they're an integral part of what I do every single day but it didn't happen overnight I had to learn how to do it and to the very first conversation we had Abhijit right I didn't learn it in school right there wasn't a classroom to teach me how to do it I learned it by doing it by hanging out with others who knew how to do it by building a purposeful network which is what we did at this right we've got a 16 year network of a lot of people that are on that same learning curve right that wanted to run it to embrace those same superpowers and now that network is far and away our biggest asset right because there are our folks who are innovation junkies you know in a network some more tightly engaged than others right that have all been listening watching engaging importing those tools back into their lives to their enterprises and back home into their communities so in some sense you know Sol I believe that a really powerful story that you write you know whatever that might be big or small a really powerful story is the one which actually changes you in the process of writing you know hundred percent people ask me every day one of the things I I've done you've seen you've been witness to this and look at I didn't do it at first when social media first started right my team was saying you know you gotta we gotta play and I resisted it like any dinosaur resist change you know I resisted it I was not the early adopter until I think they got me on Twitter first right but then I recognized the power of social media most people use it because they think they're promoting themselves right I don't use it to promote myself at all right I use it because it's like going to school every day I have curated a network around the world you're in it and every day I have people provoking me hey Sol that was a good idea if you thought of this you know do you know this person or I'm vulnerable enough to say Sol that's a really bad idea that sucks don't do that let me tell you why right and I let it all come in I think you have to work out loud that's what storytelling is it isn't putting a pretty bow on something waiting until it's beautiful putting it out there you're having a press release at a big conference right and saying okay now look at us look at how great we are because then the crowd that's been watching what you've been doing behind the curtain right it takes them weeks weeks to take down things that companies have been planning for four years and if they had just started in an emergent way and built the crowd organically right they would have had much better success this is what the new model looks like this is why you've got to think in terms of your business model and innovation can't just be how to strengthen the model I already have it has to be a both and because no one leaves a core model right overnight this is a mistake and the premise of our very conversation if you're obsessed with scale in your head you think I've got a model it works good I know what my role is I'm respected right yep in that model and now you're talking about another model and when I take it all the way to scale it looks like I'm going to stop doing this model and then tomorrow I'm going to start doing this next one that's not how transformation works you got to keep peddling the bicycle of what you're doing today and then you got to carve out enough attention and resource and time to begin to explore and experiment with new superpowers so that you can put yourself in the position to determine whether and when it's time to reinvent to pull the trigger on I'm leaving this model behind and I'm going to this one and maybe that never happens but if you don't put yourself in the position to do it you're in trouble you're going to get Netflixed you're going to get disrupted just look at what happened over the course of this pandemic it is sad to me around the world how ill-prepared we were right the reason we were not prepared to do the things that we're only doing in the pandemic because we're constrained you know the old deal necessity is the mother of all invention we wait until it's too late and then we decide we need to change and I can't begin to share how much pain I've observed over the last year from people who weren't ready and the and folks that were the most behind in entering this new 21st century idea of the way we work are the ones that got hurt the worst and it is painful to watch we've got to do better than that but it takes time you can't scale it on day one it has to emerge organically and that's the rub isn't it? So we are into the last eight minutes of our conversation and I'm going to sort of do kind of really like a rapid fire kind of responses so you know talk to me about you know how do you plan your day what does your day look like typically how much time do you spend doing what I mean broad charts? Love it. A very short answer to that is I'm one of these odd people I suspect you might be too who doesn't want to set strategy one tactic at a time right you've got to have a view of the future what are you trying to do it can be like by next month or next year or five years you need to be planful but you also need to be able to throw the plan out the window right but that doesn't mean you don't have one right and so if you ask me on any given day I will tell you these are the things I'm trying to get better at today these are the things I'm trying to accomplish today that are core right not frivolous they're not just because you know I got another email you know that said I should do this that I don't just allow all the stuff to bubble up you know and then let the day to day stuff drive how I spend my day I have a plan that I go into it always gets blown to smithereens and that's okay but I'm cognizant if you ask me at the end of the day did I make progress on what I set out to do if I can't tell you that I made progress on that I'm going to double down on it tomorrow and the next day I'm going to keep in the front of my lens the things I'm trying to do the future I'm trying to create and I'm going to work towards it a lot of people will will say you know that you can tweak your way to transformation I do not believe you can I think you need a vision for the transformation that drives you and then you take small steps towards that vision that's different than tweaking randomly stuff in your current model right you can take small steps for both but one of them is surrounded by vision and one of them isn't when you look at you know the future what are some of the things you wish to accomplish you know in a in a three to five year time frame what skill you want to build what businesses do you want to build what changes do you want to see in your life what would you say yeah so it over the next three to five years and that's that's the right time horizon and when you get to be my age you know those three to five year time chunks really matter and so it really helps to to be planful about that in three to five years I think we will have created five new ventures at this they'll all be in this personalized well-being that measurably changes healthcare outcomes the first one will be in maternal health we've even got ideas of what the next four will look like we're changing the business model to go from sponsored projects to capture value to more of a venture studio vision you know where we're raising dollars to help finance the design and prototyping phases to by participating in the spinoff of these ventures and in there all the superpowers I've spent the last 15 years building are right at the core I've got to learn a couple of new ones right I I haven't been as close to the finance world I know enough to be dangerous but I haven't lived in that world and so I've got to build some superpowers there and so I'm having lots of conversations every day with those folks because no matter what you know there's going to be a meaningful part of every single day in my life that I'm doing that I do this kind of thing right that I'm just exploring I'm having what I call random collisions with unusual suspects or making a ruckus right I don't know what I'm going to learn until I have my next conversation and and there's a big piece of my day that I will that I weave that in because that's where the insights around the next superpowers I need to learn and strengthening the ones I'm trying to build on that's where they come from and you know what is a book that you repeatedly gone back to get inspired by oh god so many I'm an avid reader oh my goodness well you know I you know I would call out my friend uh John Hagel and John C. Brown my friends you know who wrote uh you know the power of pull you know the whole paradigm of from push to pull you know central to everything we've talked about right we grew up in a push top down world we're now in a world that where pull is at the core and we don't know how to do it you know we're at large we do not know how to live in that world and to thrive in that world build enterprises in that world and so there are a bunch of books you could read that would get you to that same place you obviously read mine it'll it'll give you some of the insights around those superpowers but that's a really good one so two questions you can ask me oh my goodness what uh well what are you taking away like I presume you're going to do one of your graphic illustrations to help you think about the conversation we just had and then share it I'm just guessing that that's something you might do so what's in your mind so I kind of like the idea of the three superpowers you know because that I think is very powerful for me that was a big one and this whole idea of you know the rapid prototyping um and you know for me also the idea that you can't sort of build a story and then present it it's something that you co-create in some sense with the protagonist themselves in this particular case you know it is the consumer so you sort of really work along with that that would be my takeaway from our conversation well what's that I look I look I look forward to it right I really do I'm sorry and I said that was one question do you have another one I get I get to ask another one right uh well give me your top of mind insights around how we how we do this globally right um you know how we think about this uh I think these network systems these new purposeful networks ultimately are global uh so uh what are you thinking as you listen to you know me sitting over here in America you know yacking about all this stuff so I think you know there are you know when you when you look at any change or any idea from the lens of a country you get bogged down by a whole lot of differences you know there are you know language or cultural differences and all that stuff so I think then in which case you know it becomes far more complex but when you look at it from a human lens you know what is it that matters to a human being I just think that then regardless of the country then it's a really a boundaryless concept I'm very sort of wedded to the idea of boundarylessness being one of the shifts five shifts that I talk about in my book but this is certainly the big one that when you look at it from a human point of view everything is really boundaryless because you then you and I are not very different we want similar things for ourselves and you know you want it to be a fair world you want equity you want justice etc all of that I mean then there are human ideals that you strive towards but thank you so I love that I just I would just say to you that nation states are probably one of the world's oldest business models and pretty intransigent so boundaryless is a really nice design challenge isn't it I love it thank you thank you so very much Sol I so appreciate you're doing this and you know it's I couldn't have thought of a better person to get episode one of season two thank you so very much for agreeing to be here and I will share that sketch note with you hopefully you'll like it sorry to put you on the spot my friend if you weren't planning on doing it now that's that's the Jewish aunt thing in me I guess that's that's the way it should be bye thank you so much for joining appreciate you're coming over and thanks a lot and I'll see you next week don't forget to tune in at 7 p.m next Wednesday uh uh India time because we have another really terrific guest who's going to come up you can't afford to miss that one bye bye