Innovation Strategy: Experiment Fearlessly, Fail Forward, and Embrace Change

1. LONG Tom Peters’ Racing Up the Value-Added Ladder No Option: Innovate or Die! World Business Forum Hong Kong/02 June 2015 (Slides at tompeters.com; and our fully annotated 23-part Master Compendium at excellencenow.com)

2. “Since 1996, manufacturing employment in China itself has actuallyfallen by an estimated25 percent. That’s over30,000,000fewerChinese workers in that sector, even while output soared by 70 percent.It’s not that American workers are being replaced by Chinese workers. It’s that both American and Chinese workers are being made more efficient [replaced] by automation.” —Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

3. Innovation Strategy #1A Numbers Game WTTMTW/49

4. WHOEVER TRIES THE MOST THINGS WINS

5. READY.FIRE!AIM.H. Ross Perot (vs “Aim! Aim! Aim!”/EDS vs GM/1985)

6. “WE HAVE A STRATEGIC PLAN. IT’S CALLED ‘DOING THINGS.’ ”—Herb Kelleher“DON’T ‘PLAN.’ DO STUFF.”—David Kelley/IDEO

7. “We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version#5.By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10.It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how toplan—for months.” —Bloomberg by Bloomberg

8. “EXPERIMENT FEARLESSLY”Source: BusinessWeek, “Type A Organization Strategies: How to Hit a Moving Target”—Tactic #1“RELENTLESS TRIAL AND ERROR” Source: Wall Street Journal, cornerstone of effective approach to “rebalancing” company portfolios in the face of changing and uncertain global economic conditions (11.08.10)

9. “The difference between Bach and his forgotten peers isn’t necessarily that he had a better ratio of hits to misses. The difference is that the mediocre might have a dozen ideas, while Bach, in his lifetime, created more than a thousand full-fledged musical compositions. A genius is a genius, psychologist Paul Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great.‘Quality,’Simonton writes,‘is a probabilistic function of quantity.’”—Malcolm Gladwell, “Creation Myth,” New Yorker, 0516.11

10. 1. A Bias for Action 2. Close to the Customer 3. Autonomy and Entrepreneurship 4. Productivity Through People 5. Hands On, Value-Driven 6. Stick to the Knitting 7. Simple Form, Lean Staff 8. Simultaneous Loose-Tight Properties

11. Innovation Strategy #2LBTs(Little BIG Things)

12. Big carts = 1.5X Source: Walmart

13. Bag sizes = New markets: $B Source: PepsiCo

14. 2X:“When Friedmanslightly curvedthe right angle of an entrance corridor to one property, he was ‘amazed at the magnitude of change in pedestrians’ behavior’—the percentage who entered increased from one-third to nearly two-thirds.” —Natasha Dow Schull, Addiction By Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

15. Innovation Strategy #3TGRs(Things Gone RIGHT)

16. Customers describing their service experience as “superior”: 8% Companies describing the service experience they provide as “superior”: 80% —Source: Bain & Company survey of 362 companies, reported in John DiJulius, What's the Secret to Providing a World-class Customer Experience?

17. Conveyance: Kingfisher Air Location: Approach to New Delhi

18. “May I clean your glasses, sir?”

19. It BEGINS(and ENDS) in the …

20. PARKINGLOT**Disney

21. <TGWand …>TGR[Things Gone WRONG-Things Gone RIGHT]

22. “Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.”—Henry Clay

23. Innovation Strategy #4Most Failures Wins

24. “FAIL. FORWARD. FAST.”—High Tech CEO, Pennsylvania“FAIL FASTER. SUCCEED SOONER.”—David Kelley/IDEO“MOVE FAST. BREAK THINGS.”—Facebook“REWARD EXCELLENT FAILURES. PUNISH MEDIOCRE SUCCESSES.”—Phil Daniels

25. Richard Farson & Ralph Keyes:Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation* (*Book title)

26. “ ‘Success,’ Honda said, ‘can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. Success represents one percent of your work, which results only from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure.’ ”—Jeffrey Rothfeder, Driving Honda: Inside the World’s Most Innovative Car Company

27. “What really matters is that companies that don’t continue to experiment— COMPANIES THAT DON’T EMBRACE FAILURE — eventually get in a desperate position, where the only thing they can do is make a ‘Hail Mary’ bet at the end.” —Jeff Bezos at Business Insider “Ignition” conference, 1202.14

28. “The secret of fast progress is INEFFICIENCY, fast and furious and numerous failures.”—Kevin Kelly

29. WTTMTAMTMMW

30. WHOEVER TRIES THE MOST THINGS AND MAKES THE MOST MISTAKES WINS

31. Innovation Strategy #5 Tempo/ Temperament

32. “If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” —Mario Andretti, race driver “I’m not comfortable unless I’m uncomfortable.” —Jay Chiat “If it works, it’s obsolete.” —Marshall McLuhan

33. Antifragile*: Things That GAINFrom Disorder —Nassim Nicholas Taleb*Not to be confused with … RESILIENCE

34. WTTMTAMTMMTFW

35. WHOEVER TRIES THE MOST THINGS AND MAKES THE MOST MISTAKES THE FASTEST WINS

36. Innovation Strategy #6SERIOIUS PLAY(Culture of)

37. “You can’t be a serious innovator unless and until you are ready, willing and able to seriously play.‘Serious play’is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation.”—Michael Schrage,Serious Play

38. WSJ/0910.13: “What matters most to a company over time? Strategy or culture? Dominic Barton, Managing Director, McKinsey & Co.:“Culture.”

39. “If I could have chosen not to tackle the IBM culture head-on, I probably wouldn’t have. My bias coming in was toward strategy, analysis and measurement. In comparison, changing the attitude and behaviors of hundreds of thousands of people is very, very hard.Yet I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game —IT IS THE GAME.” —Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance

40. Innovation Strategy #7Losers&Winners

41. S&P 500 +1/-1* *Every …2weeks! Source: Richard Foster (via Rita McGrath/HBR/12.26.13

42. “Mr. Foster and his McKinsey colleagues collected detailed performance data stretching back 40 years for1,000U.S. companies.They found thatNONEofthe long-term survivors managed to outperform the market. Worse, the longer companies had been in the database, the worse they did.” —Financial Times

43. The Magicians of Motueka (PLUS)! W.A. Coppins Ltd.* (Coppins Sea Anchors/ PSA/para sea anchors) *Textiles, 1898; thrive on “wicked problems” —e.g., U.S. Navy STLVAST (Small To Large Vehicle At Sea Transfer); custom fabric from W. Wiggins Ltd./Wellington (specialty nylon, “Dyneema,” from DSM/Netherlands)

44. MITTELSTAND*

45. “agile creatures darting between the legs of the multinational monsters” Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek on the GermanMITTELSTAND

46. Middle-sized Niche- Micro-niche Dominators!* *"Own" a niche through EXCELLENCE/INNOVATION!

47. “BE THE BEST. IT’S THE ONLY MARKET THAT’S NOT CROWDED.” From: Retail Superstars: Inside the 25 Best Independent Stores in America, George Whalin

48. Innovation Strategy #8We Are What We Eat.We Are Who We Spend Time With.

49. Diversity: “IT IS HARDLY POSSIBLE TO OVERRATE THE VALUE OF PLACING HUMAN BEINGS IN CONTACT WITH PERSONS DIS-SIMILAR TO THEMSELVES, AND WITH MODES OF THOUGHT AND ACTION UNLIKE THOSE WITH WHICH THEY ARE FAMILIAR. SUCH COMMUNICATION HAS ALWAYS BEEN, AND IS PECULIARLY IN THE PRESENT AGE, ONE OF THE PRIMARY SOURCES OF PROGRESS.”—John Stuart Mill

50. “You will become like the five people you associate with the most—this can be either a blessing or a curse.”—Billy Cox