RDC’s Bird’s Eye View series explores what the future of events truly is by bringing unexpected perspectives to the forefront.
Robyn met up with Scott D. Anthony, author of Eat, Sleep, Innovate and Senior Partner at Innosight Consulting, to chat all about innovation and creativity, and the barriers that many organizations face when trying to innovate. Anthony shares some key tips and tricks from his book on how organizations, and individuals, can overcome those barriers to drive change and success.
Watch or read the full interview below:
Robyn Duda: Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how Eat Sleep Innovate came to be?
Scott D. Anthony: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be in this discussion. I'm a Senior Partner at a consulting company called Innosight. Innosight was founded by Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma and a range of other books. Our mission is to empower forward-thinking organizations to navigate disruptive change and own the future. I remember the origin story of Eat, Sleep, Innovate pretty clearly. It was about seven years ago, I was in Singapore. I was running a workshop for a big global shipping company, and its CEO was getting really impatient. We're all about disruption, so we were saying there's disruptive changes going on in your industry, you need to set up a separate group, come up with new ideas, etc. And he said, ‘I've read all your books, I've done all of those things. I also have another 100,000 people. What do I do with that?’ And we just didn't have a good answer for that. And we realized it was a really good question.
Of course, you need to think about how you're going to create that special forces team to go and really push boundaries and all that. But almost every organization has untapped innovation potential. And it isn't just about doing the great big bold things. Yes, those are important. It's really about how do you create a culture where the habits that create innovation success are things that happen naturally? How do you really have behaviors that lead you to go and invent and discover new things? You don't have to force or push or cajole, it's just part of the fabric of the organization. So that question started an effort to really come up with a good answer to that question.
RD: And a good one it is — I have my copy here. It’s one of my favorite books. So many things resonated with the industry that I'm in, from an event standpoint. A lot of the events are really stale and old, and people are set in their old ways and afraid of risk, and think they're innovative but they're not. Even just the first few chapters captured me. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, if everyone could just read this book, we'd be in a lot better shape, especially during the pandemic.’ Along those lines, what do you think the biggest roadblock to innovation is?
SA: This is one of these a-ha moments as we were going through the writing of the book. In the book, we say the culture of innovation is one in which the behaviors that drive innovation success are habits. Innovation we define as something different that creates value. Very simple definition, but one that creates lots of room both for big things, like world saving vaccines, and little things that make life just a little bit better. We say the behaviors that lead to innovation success are curiosity, customer obsession, collaboration, being adept in ambiguity and being empowered. So here's the “duh” moment: those behaviors are not that hard. In fact, I've got four kids here in Singapore. I don't have to teach those kids those behaviors because kids are naturally experimental, curious and so on. The duh moment, why is it so hard in organizations? Well, innovation is something different that creates value. Organizations exist to do what they are currently doing — better, faster, or more effectively. So the hidden barrier to innovation inside organizations is very simple. It's inertia. It's the way that you've always done things. It's ingrained habits. So if you really want to go and encourage those behaviors, you have to fight against that institutionalized inertia. It's why we have this tool in the book that seems too simple to work, but it actually does.
This tool called a BEAN, which we just shamelessly stole from the habit change literature. It says, if you want to get someone to change, you have to help them in two different ways. Number one, you have to give them direct help. Get after their logical, rational mind with the behavior enabler. That’s the first two letters of BEAN. Give them a checklist, get them a coach, whatever. Then you have to go after their unconscious, where they make decisions without even thinking about it. That's the A-N. The artifact and nudge. Visual reminder, or gamification principles, or whatever. You bring those things together — behavior, enabler, artifact, and nudge — you plant the BEAN. You overcome the inertia, you encourage the behaviors, you drive innovation success. Now I hope people read the whole book, but that's kind of the book in three minutes or less.
RD: There's much more in the book, I promise you. For me, it's what's step one? Step one being, institutions don't know they have a problem a lot of the time. What's the step one in all of this? How do we get to that point to start this work?
SA: It's exactly right. It's very hard to solve a problem that you can't define. I think step one, in many cases, is to say, what actually is going on? There's a bunch of ways that you can get into that discussion. A very simple question we ask people is, are you changing at the pace and scale of the industry that you're in? And almost no one says yes to that question. Or, are you getting the returns that you want on your innovation efforts? And if they say, what innovation efforts? Well, that's a whole other conversation. It’s that idea of the world is changing, are you changing at the same pace as the world? You probably are doing something these days related innovation, are you happy with it? So once you get answers to those questions, which are basically no and no, you say, Okay, what's going on? What exactly is the thing that's holding you back? And this is where you have to start doing some work, because people will say things that they think are true but are not. So they'll say, ‘we don't have hotshot kids that have just graduated from West Coast universities, so how can we possibly innovate?’ And that's not what you need. You need human beings. If your organization is run by robots, that's fine. But organizations have human beings. And again, just think back to when you were a kid, what kids do. It's all it really is. It's bringing that childlike wonder back out. It's not creating something new. It's releasing something that's inside of you. So really, the first part is saying, Yes, we have a problem. And yes, we are, as a group, capable of doing this, and then you start doing the work.
RD: I’m in the event industry, and I'm sure you can imagine that the industry has been completely turned upside down. In a world where we believed that nothing would ever replace a handshake, virtual always existed, but it now is the core to what we do in creating engagement and connections across the world. But it wasn't so much that virtual is innovation, it's that it’s survival right now. As someone who deals in this every day but also speaks quite a bit, what do you think organizations can do now to thrive in the future? I find that we're in survival mode and no one's really thinking about the future because they can't get out of the now. But it's critical to keep thinking about tomorrow too. Any recommendations or advice for organizations?
SA: We can spend hours talking about that question. First, just in terms of context, I've had a reasonably unusual pandemic experience. I've been in Singapore since the pandemic began as the home base, and Singapore has gone through various waves like most of the world has. I've traveled, so I have a special pass from the Singapore government that allows me to get back into the country without doing the 14 day quarantine that most people have to do, as long as they follow certain rules and restrictions. So I've done now seven international trips, I've done a lot of virtual things. I've done some hybrid things, and I even have done some honest to goodness live, everyone in the room events. I've seen just about everything during the pandemic. The other just comment just for context, is there was a lot of discussion when the pandemic started about what letter shape would ultimately characterize what happened to economies. Would it be an L things dropped, would it be a V where everything sprung back? Would it be a W? Our observation pretty early on was that the letter K was the letter that best characterizes the pandemic, where you have some industries that have zoomed up — and that pun is absolutely intended where the pandemic has actually been very good for their business — and some industries have been grounded — again, the pun is absolutely intended. You have just a general question you need to ask if you're a leader in any organization, where are we on the K? And if we've been fortunate enough to be on the upslope, what's going to continue? What do we do with our pandemic premium? If we're on the downslope, it's time to really step back and reflect? Is it going to come back? Is it not? What have we learned that we can inform what we do differently in the future?
So specific to events, I think one of the things that I was just people in the event business do is follow a piece of advice that is given to students in medical school. That piece of advice is, don't just do something, stand there. You're usually told, don't just stand there, do something, and this is the inverse of it. It is a moment to pause, to reflect, to stand back, to get off of the dance floor to go to the balcony, whatever metaphor you want to use, and really ask, what has happened here that we like that we want to continue? What has happened here that we never want to do again? That we were forced to do, but it's a vastly inferior solution. So let me tell you just a reflection on that in terms of events. I remember January of this year, I had my first face to face event in months. Fully face to face, no one was virtual. And at first, I'm super excited. It’s a real thing. It's real humans in the room, etc. And then about 10 minutes in I'm like, the technology doesn't quite work as seamlessly as it does when I'm in Zoom and I can control everything. And I've got a breakout group going and I can't stop that. In Zoom, I just press the button, and everyone comes back. So I see some downsides. And then there's the moment where the most senior person in the room and I go to the side of the room, and we have a couple minute sidebar and we make a couple of real time adjustments. So there are some upsides, there are some downsides.
I think that's the biggest thing for people to reflect on. Virtual has a lot of advantages. The ability to democratize and get different voices in, and have multi-channel discussions and have different forms of interactivity. That is awesome. How do you make sure that that continues, while also bringing the things that people really want, which is the keen connection, the ability to meet people, the ability to network, so on. Doing all those things in virtual environments, people have really tried, it doesn't really work. It just doesn't. We've gotten to not awful for how we can do virtual events on those dimensions, but they're never going to be great. So anyway, it's a moment to reflect and see what you want to keep and what you want to throw away.
RD: I completely agree, and anybody who knows my views on events, mine is that we need to break everything down and then figure out how you want to build it back up. Let’s start with a clean slate. One of the awesome things that comes out of it is that I can just go hop on LinkedIn, and message people like you to maybe come on and chat with me about this stuff. And I've seen and heard more stories like that over the course of the last 18 months or so, which opens up a whole set of different kinds of doors of networking.
SA: 100% agree. When we launched the book, I have a third-degree connection to Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, who wrote the book Creativity Incorporated and is a legend. And I figured, why not, so I went through the third degree connection said, ‘Ed, are you willing to get on a Zoom and talk about some of the ideas in the book?’ And he said yes, and if it was not pandemic virtual environment, I would have to have been in the same place as him and all that, and we had a 45 minute conversation, and it was just amazing. It's on our website, eatsleepinnovate.com You can watch it, you can see what I look like when I'm utterly starstruck, because it's Ed Catmull, Pixar. The guy is the living legend. And it also was like two in the morning. I managed to make it through and it's just the things he said. One of the things he said that really stuck with me is near the end, he said, I’ve realized that I'm wrong about a third of the time. He said, I'm right two thirds of the time, but I'm wrong about a third of the time. And once you realize that you're wrong about a third of the time, when someone says something that is different than what you believe, you say, Well, I ought to listen to them. This is Ed Catmull, he co-founded a company with Steve Jobs. He sold that company to Disney. He ran the animation studio at Pixar. I mean, if he's wrong a third of the time and willing to say that, how right do you think normal people like you and I are? That humility I think is such an important ingredient. Anyway, that's a long story, but the basic point is removing those barriers, showing what's possible, if we just try, I think is one of the great lessons we've learned over the course of the past 19 months.
RD: You mentioned Pixar, and that's mentioned in the book a bit. What's your favorite business innovation story?
SA: It’s an impossible question, it’s like asking which of my four kids I love the most. I will say generally, and this is where the book starts. I love the Pixars of the world, the Amazons, the Googles, and all that, but I have a real soft spot for the unexpected. We call it the book, normal organizations doing extraordinary things, or NODETs. So the red thread that runs through the book is what you consider to be a pretty boring organization. It's DBS Bank, which is the largest bank here in Southeast Asia. So when you see a bank doing cool things, some of it everyday stuff, like using data analytics to figure out that if you put an ATM near a supermarket that sells fresh fish, you get scales in the ATM, and that leads to there being more breakdowns and you have to go and make sure you maintain them more. I love that. And then I love, we start with stories from UNICEF, and I remember very fondly UNICEF from when I was growing up with cardboard boxes that you out change into, but I had lost track. And you go and see, well, this is an organization with 12,000 people around the globe that is helping children everywhere, and it's doing some amazingly innovative things.
We have the story of this program called Upshift, where somebody in Kosovo found a way to energize disaffected communities within the region and really get young people to solve real social problems in the region. I mean, this is not Steve Jobs or Ed Catmull. This is just a normal person in an organization who said, I see a problem. I've got an idea, I'm going to try it out. And then the great thing about UNICEF is they've got great ways to collaborate. So what happens in Kosovo goes to Vietnam, and goes all through the glove. And again, this is someone just like you or me, that just has an idea, and the world is a different place because of it. I really love the stories in the book like UNICEF and like the Salvation Army, Settlement Music School in Philadelphia area. Those are things where you can connect and imagine that I could do something like that. And you could. Everybody's got the ability to do something different that creates value. So that wasn't one. I recognize I got a few different ones in there, but hopefully it's an acceptable answer.
RD: It's a perfectly acceptable answer. The next one might be a little bit harder though. I'm big on inspiration. I'm constantly trying to be inspired by things outside of my industry. I think we learn so much by crossing learnings from different places, but more importantly, where those people get inspiration from. So where do you get your inspiration?
SA: Just a general comment, that idea of going across, behavior number three that I said in the five behaviors is being collaborative. One of the most persistent findings in the innovation literature is that magic happens at intersections, when different mindsets and skill sets collide together. I think the general piece of advice I give people is get to the intersections, go to the uncommon place, try and pick up something from one place and bring it to another.
For me, I would say the number one source of inspiration is the kids, just because the kids are, in the line of William Gibson, ‘The future is already arrived, it’s just not very evenly distributed,’ and they're living tomorrow today. My 15-year-old boy Charlie teaches me about cryptocurrency. He and his friends are trying to create a coin and create a business around it. My 13-year-old girl Holly, she really loves digital art, and she's got a whole fan site of people who get commissions from her, and she gives commissions to other people. So understanding what the creator economy looks like I've learned from Holly. My 10-year-old boy Harry just loves robots, and he's trying to teach himself how to do programming. Very basic programming of course, he’s only 10, but just seeing how people can explore topics, and what are ways in which you can upgrade skills, I learn a lot from him. My five-year-old’s just cute, so I can't say that he's taught me anything just yet, but I'm sure there'll be something that Teddy is going to teach me as well. Again, there's a generic piece of advice here. If you have kids, spend time with them and see what they're doing. If you don't have kids, find ways to tap into the energy of youth, because what is the edgy behavior that the kids are doing today is going to be mainstream tomorrow. We know that, that has always been true.
RD: I love that answer. I could not agree more. Side note that maybe we'll put in the video or not, but I started doing some pro bono work when the pandemic first hit, and one of the organizations a very good friend of mine pulled me into was this future problem solvers international program. And they teach kids design thinking essentially, how to problem solve and how to really think for themselves. And I got very involved in the organization, and that's where I'm getting like a ton of my ideas from, being around these kids who think differently and have very few biases. They don't understand what risk really is yet, and their ideas are just so pure. It’s a really cool environment to be immersed in.
SA: Absolutely. One of the ‘proud dad’ moments was a couple years ago, Holly the 13 year old, she entered a regional entrepreneurial boot camp competition, based on design thinking and all that. And it was mostly people were in high school, but her and her friend had an idea to create a platform to connect generations called Generation Connections. And they made it to the finals, which was held in Singapore, and there were 30 teams — back in the good old days — that came from all over Southeast Asia. They all went to pitch their idea, and they went down from 30 to eight and then they pitched again in the big auditorium. Holly didn't win, but she got second runner up, and she and Ellison were, I think, the youngest people who made it to the finals. But it was just seeing the energy of youth. And of course, sometimes it ends up being naivete. There is a line between those things. But that idea of not having pre-held conceptions, just thinking more expansively, and as you said, just thinking about risk differently.
If you look at the behavioral economics literature, one of the big ideas is the idea from Tversky and Kahneman called Prospect Theory. And the basic idea is we would rather avoid losses than receive gains. Kids don't have much to lose. So it’s like why not? And the further you get in your life or your career, as Bob Dylan said, ‘If you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ And if you've got something, if you're an executive at a big company, it's very natural that you worry about the losses, it's just the human brain. When you see kids without those things, it's like, ‘Wow.’ Again, this is something all of us can do. You have to recognize the biases. You have to recognize the blind spots, but they're all things that can be overcome.
RD: That's such good advice. A piece of advice for me, from you. In the book, seven ways to display curiosity was a list that you had. One of them I am, and have been for as long as I can remember, a firm believer of — idea road trips. I would love for you to talk a little bit about that, but my team and I are going on an idea road trip next week to Utah and Idaho. We have some activities planned, and room for spontaneity, reflections, etc. But explain a little bit about how you come at that, and then any advice for us for next week.
SA: The idea for the idea road trip came from a conference I spoke at in Australia a few years ago, where one of the other speakers was Nolan Bushnell, who at first I was mad when I saw him because he almost destroyed my youth. And then again, it was a huge fanboy moment. He was the founder of Atari. The modern video game industry traces back to him. He then founded Chuck E. Cheese, and he's just been a serial innovator. And one of the things he said during his speech that really struck me is he said, the cheapest form of market research you can do is to go to trade shows. And he said, not trade shows in the industry that you're thinking about. It's going to trade shows in completely different industries, because you just never know where you're going to make a connection. And I said, Ah, he's talking about going on an idea road trip. As I played with that idea, and watched people do it, and done some of my own, I think that the three tips I would provide: number one, start it with the problem you're trying to solve. It could be, how do we rethink the event industry? Whatever it is. You've got a clear problem in your mind that you're using to get stimuli.
Number two: try to get as diverse stimuli as you can. If you're in the event industry, don't go to a discussion with other people in the event industry. Look at the toy industry, look at the home appliance industry, or whatever. The more different, the better. And then number three: make sure that you've got room for reflection, whether that's just a ritual where every night you're spending five or 10 minutes writing things down, or you and the people that you're with are in the morning saying, Okay, what did we dream about? What are we associating with? Build in some kind of mechanism to sense make and see what you're seeing and allow yourself to have wild ridiculous ideas as you do it, because that's where you then create other connection points, where by the end of it all, you have something that you never would have thought of because you've gone through this journey.
RD: Great advice. Any final words for everyone other than eatsleepinnovate.com — get this book, it validated a ton of things that I thought I was crazy for thinking but also gave some really tactical, practical ways of approaching them.
SA: I would just reinforce one of the things we've talked about here, that people will say often well, that's not me. I'm not an innovator. I'm not Elon Musk, or whatever. And it absolutely is inside everyone. Everyone has the ability to do something different that creates value. And the world we live in now, where technologies are advancing exponentially, and lines between industries are blurring, and consumer and employee expectations are changing, and these shocks just keep getting thrown at us, it's something that we all have to get better at. And we can do it. It's not insurmountable. It's just a matter of taking simple, small steps to follow those five behaviors.
Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
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