Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth for another edition of our podcast, and joining me from Zurich, Switzerland. It's a few hours time difference is Stefan Dieffenbacher and the book that we're going to be talking about is this Wiley book, How to create innovation. Good day to you, Stefan. How are you doing in Zurich, Switzerland this afternoon?

Thank you so much for having me on this wonderful Election Day here. Yeah,

Greg Voisen
it is election day here in the United States. I don't think it is in Zurich, but it is here. That's for certain. But I do thank you for that. And you know, when anyone comes on the show with ideas around innovation, and this one, how to create innovation which is really unique in itself, the title and all the work that you put into this all the years, I want to let our listeners know a little bit about you. He's a global industry thought leader in the innovation and transformation space. In his role as a digital executive, game changer and strategist. He has digital change programs for the top five firms across almost all sectors globally. That is really something you can learn more about this book by just going to and I want to make sure that I get this right, because I've got it up. It's digital leadership.com just go to digital leadership.com there. Also you can learn how to get innovation success for free. There's tools and models. This is a Wiley book, and for all of you who are out there, it is a little bit thick, but it's really filled with because this was co created with all of his associates. So the contributions come from all over and it took, I think he said five years to put this together, is that right? Seven was a five years of research. So Stefan has expertise across large scale, digital innovation and transformation programs for major firms across much industries, Key Pairs boardroom level strategic thinking and deep portfolio management expertise with the ability to execute with a deep interdisciplinarian knowledge and expertise with both strategy and execution. He strategized executed and growth hack digital ventures for both startup and corporations. He holds a master's degree and an MBA from Hensley business school in London. He's also frequently teaches at international business schools, and again, if you want to learn more, you can go to digital leadership.com there you can learn more about the book and all of the people he collaborated with to do that. So I want to thank you for taking this time to really be on the show and spend some time with us to talk about the book, and literally the resources you have at the website is as well how to create innovation emphasizes that innovation is a process that can be nurtured and developed, right? And I don't think that all business people look at it that way. Why do you believe or what are the foundational elements that must be in place for innovation to thrive? I don't care if it's at a at a smaller company or a company like my son works as an executive Adobe, because every day they're innovating something there, right? And, you know, there are similarities between the people who are smaller trying to innovate and large companies that are trying to innovate as well.

So I think over time, we managed to mature any discipline, and we managed to mature it by understanding its ingredients, by understanding its many components. And I think innovation consists out of many, many components. You can't think out of innovation, or you have to consider the foundation's culture, the structure, the organizational setup, the right processes and approaches, the right team, of course, funding. There are so many ingredients that play a role. But most importantly, I guess, we need to mature that industry. We need to mature innovation, how we approach it, how we do it, and really engineer it in the right way to ultimately increase the success rates. I think that is most critical, innovation can be engineered, and success can be engineered as in any other business discipline. And I think that's the most important message, perhaps of all,

Greg Voisen
yeah. And I think engineering innovation is a unique concept in itself. I know that a lot of companies have innovation departments, but then a lot of them don't have that. And kind of, in this digital age, which you know, that's what you approach, it's called digital leadership, innovation often feels like a buzzword. How do you differentiate true innovation from mere iteration or improvement within a company. So it's like, okay, yeah, I have an iPhone 15, and now I go to an iPhone 16. Might be what we might call an iteration. But according to Apple, when they release the 16, and I'll use them as an example. They were supposed to have aI embedded, and it was the worst release ever because the AI was not there. So I guess the question for you would be, in a company that's $3 trillion strong, making such a big mistake in the innovation cycle. What would you have to say about that?

And before, before we talk about Apple, perhaps in details. So I think innovation, by definition, actually is radical in nature. It's not an incremental improvement. It's not transformative. So it's not a step change to one part of a business model, which is the definition of a transformation, or a digital transformation. But innovation is truly radical. So it's an entirely new thing, foreign industry, for a country, for something on a large scale. Otherwise it's not truly innovative. So innovation, remember, that is radical in nature. Now, I don't know about the mishaps of Apple in that case, but basically, as we move from one iPhone generation to the next iPhone generation, most things remain the same, and some things are incrementally updated done. There are sometimes some aspects which can be radical. For example, if truly it would have game changing artificial intelligence integrated, but perhaps, and it seems like I haven't tested it myself, it seems more like it was a marketing hype to manipulate the stocks of Apple. But then I don't know, yeah,

Greg Voisen
yeah, it was a disappointment for a lot of people, and it was touted as one of the most challenging thing. They say that they have it fixed now, so we'll see if that little AI integration into the phone is was that good? Now you discuss the importance of creating a culture. You just mentioned that in when I asked you the first question was this cultural issue of innovation in the book and and, and I get that having a culture where people are engaged and committed and committed to developing and innovating is important. What are the key characteristics of an innovation culture, and how can leaders fast foster this kind of environment?

And culture is perhaps the number one critical, most critical component. Yeah, it's always the elephant in the room. And the big problem out there is we don't actually know what culture is, yeah, everybody believes, oh, it's colorful, offices, ping pong tables, sushi for lunches or massages, as we get to believe from some Silicon Valley films. But the question is, what is it really and how do I change it towards an innovation culture? And there are numerous ingredients at play, which all together form basically what we call culture. They can and basically, for the first time, we have identified those components and designed a culture canvas which strategically identifies those most important components of culture that allows you to design your own innovation culture. Now I can't take you through all of those components, but perhaps a few of them, so as we would be good, yeah. So most important perhaps is decision making. So as we are incrementally improving, and we are normally in the context of our existing firm, normally decision making is top down, so a director tells from top to bottom what is to be done in an innovation situation. So you do something profoundly new, nobody has, by definition, the best answer. Otherwise, you wouldn't be doing an innovation, probably to start with. So that one is why we regroup in in teams. We leave the silos around one table, and we take decisions together, and there is no single best person who takes decisions. So we start then communicating on eye level. There is no top down communication, and the role of leadership then changes clearly and obviously. Hiring changes because most likely if you expect people to take decisions and if they're together around one table, well you might need T shaped people there who have broad competency and deep competency at the same time. And these are some aspects and the right prerequisites that you need to have in place for an innovation culture to truly thrive. So it's truly a mindset shift and the paradigm shift. Talk about value creation, from machines to people thinking in networks. Leadership through trust, in blending work life, perhaps in leading together with your colleagues, as opposed to having a boss which already changes the wording, etc. These are some of the key aspects that are critical as you consider an innovation culture. And please be invited to download the canvas where you have all of that pointed out, including examples how to set up and define new innovation culture.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, I'm looking while we're talking, because there's several screens open. And you know, you've been in BMW, you've been in Audi, you've been in IBM, you've been in all of these places. And if you were to give us a real world example from maybe one of these companies, bear BMW, or B and P, or something about how you and your team came in and what you did to assist those organizations in transforming their culture such that it improved that whole innovation element. What are the key takeaways from that experience that you could share with some of our listeners right now are like, Okay, if I wanted to get in touch with Stefan, and I had this big company, and I'm listening today the podcast, what could he really do for me?

I mean, perhaps one general culture, perhaps one general example about innovation to start with that we can all relate to is a supermarket experience, yeah? And we all in supermarkets, probably every week, and we are shopping for, let's say, wine bottles. Yeah, we are going to find a nice wine bottle for tonight. And wines are normally structured by by pricing, yeah, and by countries, and that leaves us a choice most of us don't know. So you have a Chateau Lafite in front of you from 2018 and you have Garry Bardy, say, from 2016 and you serve spaghetti with clams. And now, yeah, which bottle Do you buy? And statistically, it's only 2% of the population who are wine converses. So really know the shit about wine into able to select among the 1000s of bottles there are the perfectly right one, because they know it, and that is the struggle people are perceiving there. And so what we did is we thought about, how can we change that wine purchasing experience. So we started with a fresh understanding of the customer. What are they wanting to achieve, and what they want to achieve is, hey, we serve spaghetti with clamps tonight. I need a fitting wine bottle, and that is what we did. So we rearranged all wines, not by price, not by countries, but by wines to match your cooking style by what you're going to have to eat, and send specific or special wines for weddings or birthdays or whatsoever. That change was implemented in one of the biggest supermarket change both in the stores as well as E commerce, and it immediately led to a 21% uplift in wine bottle sales overnight, which was a billion dollar revenue gross opportunity by just rearranging how we sell wine bottles in a supermarket, both online and offline. What an example.

Greg Voisen
That's a I love that example. Thank you for that. When I do buy wine, I usually buy it at Costco, right? And Costco is the biggest seller of wines. Most people don't understand that. I don't know if there's even Costco in Switzerland or not, but here in the United States, they sell I don't know if it is a billion dollar sort of line. It's a lot of wine, right? So that was a great example, by the way, of how you reorganized it. So your book covers various methodologies for fostering more innovation. Which methodologies do you find most effective, and how can organizations tailor these methods to fit their unique needs? So if you could get because this book is the how to create innovation book, and for most people, the pictures, the graphs, the charts, everything that's in here is a way to help you get to methodologies for fostering innovation,

absolutely. So this book is perhaps the first book that covers innovation end to end. So we have covered all stages in the process and across all disciplines. And the thing is, now Greg asked me the difficult question of which is the most important one? And actually, I'm not sure I have an answer, yeah. It's like asking the architect which process or which part of the building is most important, the toilet, where you cook, the kitchen, a good bed, lighting, perhaps, yeah. And I'm like, Oh, I don't know for innovation myself, so I think it's all of them. Ultimately, you leave some out. You don't miss. You miss to understand customer needs. It's probably very bad. Well, you miss the business case. It's probably very bad. You miss building the right value proposition. You missed it broadly as well. You missed the financials. Oh, that's not good. And so perhaps I have a different message. I think in the past, we have been trying to be the very best individual product, the best customer experience, the best financial plan, the best whatsoever. And actually, I think it's wrong. I think to have a mediocre experience is good enough to have a mediocre brand, to have a mediocre business plan, to have a mediocre value proposition, to have a medium, mediocre business model. All that is good enough. The most important thing, perhaps, is integrating all of those different aspects. This is where teams and organizations fundamentally struggle with. This is where they fail, because the handover points, because between all those different processes and parts and methodologies normally are missing. So I think let's don't strive for excellence in one part or one process or one methodology. Let's rather work on integrating those. This is where we struggle today.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, most definitely. And you know, I know that during the course of you and I getting to know each other over the last couple of months, I introduced you to Greg galley at solve next, and I recognize that, you know, they're all about innovation as you are, and your team and what you do. And I've always been deeply engaged in this area. Everybody from you know you worked while we're looking at David sibitz, who does this work with the graphic facilitation and so on and and so you talk about methodologies for fostering innovation. And it's not a one size fits all solution, is what you just said. It's like, hey, it can't be. How should companies approach the process of identifying a right innovation strategy for let's say, and let's pick an industry you just use the grocery industry. I'm going to use the technology industry, let's say software. How would they pick the right innovation strategy for their specific market or industry?

So I mean in general, what we have tried to define is the most likely approach that works in most situations for most companies, in that settings, and that works most of the time. Yeah, you have to tailor, however, the details. Obviously, if you have a supermarket problem and need to rearrange the structure or presentation of your materials or your offerings, it's a different type of problem, then you do deep technology research around AI, yeah, that is, of course, a very different proposition, a different challenge. One is technology focused, one is customer focused, etc, and so on. So while the fundamental process works in most industries and settings, you have to adjust for the specifics of your industry, there is no common recipe here. I think it takes real human intelligence and human human intelligence, AI is not yet helping us here, and that it takes a lot of training time to become good at it. So having a track record in an industry is actually beneficial. So, you know, where are the levers and what you should pay attention to? You know,

Greg Voisen
I think it was interesting. I was speaking with somebody the other day. We were did an interview and discussing it, and they were saying that, that when you go innovate something new, and we're now talking about the role of failure. They they run out forward with something new, and they funded the money to get to the forward motion. What they didn't realize is that maybe there was going to be a failure at the end of that, and they had to have the funds to come back and redo it right? So her, her theory was, hey, it's one thing to be thinking about having funds to innovate something new, but do you have enough funds if that fails? Okay, and so, how do companies create a safe space for experimentation and failure without risking significant losses. And I would say this is true. Not everything you put out there is a success. It's a learning lesson, and it's iterative in nature, right? Just by the mere fact that this is a new innovation, it's iterative. We don't know if it's going to be accepted or not. We've seen it happen with software. We've seen it happen with a lot of things.

Yeah. And so if you look today, nine out of 10 innovation, I mean true, radical innovation initiatives flow, regardless if you are in the startup space or in the corporate space, nine out of 10 flock. That is a catastrophic ratio. I think if you look back 10 years ago that we had the lean startup movement. So we try it. That was inspired from Toyota, the lean production. Way we do it lean now, so we do it extremely fast. That is where the good MVP then came from. Let's build a minimum viable product. And all of those processes are important, and the rate of failure, sorry, the costs of failure drastically reduced by embedding fundamentally lean approaches. So that movement made sense, but the fundamental problem is still the same. Our success ratio has not improved over the last decade until nine out of 10 ideas and initiatives ultimately fraught, and so I would actually advocate for the opposite. Let's do our approach seriously. Let's validate as early as possible, and let's focus on understanding important but unmet customer needs as a basis for innovation, yeah, such as where we are rearranged bottles of wine in a supermarket presentation. Let's leverage differentiating capabilities so we truly build an unfair advantage. Let's work with experienced professional who have a track record as entrepreneurs. These are things you can do, right? Yeah, but even if you do a lot of things well, you will still fail occasionally. So you cannot launch a single innovation project if you're serious, you have to always think in terms of a portfolio. But basically, if you take those lessons from the book seriously, you should be able to double and triple your innovation success rate. Having one in three fail or one in three succeed is entirely an option if you follow the processes, if you validate throughout. The ultimate measure is we want to increase the investment security. We don't want to be the faster. That's not a measure I care about. We want to have. We want to be the guys which offer the greatest investment security. We want to see successes. And we do that by validating early and by validating what needs to be validated as soon as possible. I

Greg Voisen
don't know how much in this process, but it is a kind of an off the wall question for you. But you know, everybody today is trying to use some level of predictive analytics to kind of figure out what's going to hit them, right? So Rita McGrath talks about connecting the dots, and, you know, being able to see into the future the best we can, right? And, and I'm would ask you this question, what advice would you have for companies who are looking at all these factors of innovating something to really get the best data that they possibly could, to have some predictive analytics of the outcome for demand, for whatever it's creating. To be able to have more information that would validate that what they're going to put out into the market would be great, more greatly accepted and utilized, right? And that kind of goes across industries that's not just, you know, software, that's the wine industry, that's any industry, because we are attempting to change something that will then be adopted and accepted by a consumer, in the end, in many cases. Yeah,

so Predictive analytics is a concept you normally apply, originally apply in mechanical engineering, so you have a machine and you see how it is running and what is going to happen next as it continues to run and when it breaks potentially. And here we have a stable context. So here, predictive analytics work extremely well, and predictive data works also rather well when you have a stable context. That's why chatgpt actually works. Yeah, can predict the context. It knows the context, it has all the knowledge in the world, and therefore it can predict the next word. That is the fundamental technology behind chatgpt and by works. Now, when we are innovating, we are in by definition, at least if we take the word seriously, we are doing something radical. If we are in a radically new market, and we are, for the first time, doing something new. It's very difficult to predict why you don't have the data. By definition, otherwise you wouldn't be innovated. Yeah, that is what is making prediction and predictive data so difficult, and why would shy away from it? Now you may be able to have some data,

Greg Voisen
maybe that's the difference between iterative, meaning the next iteration that I'm trying to predict that the iPhone will be accepted. And I think many of the inventions that I see in technology are iterative in nature. In other words, there's been this constant, little bit of better. Hey, it's like somebody says, well, what's the roadmap for that software? And you say, well, all of our customers said we need to put in this, this, this and this, right? And so you obviously all the programmers are looking at they're going, Okay, well, we have a demand for 16 new things, but our roadmap says we're only going to put in five, right? So those are kind of really iterations, because it's the next version of the software, right? Multiple

step. And here, as you have already an iPhone, what feature is going to make it more attractive? While that is something you can test, you have the basic basic data for that. So here it works otherwise, what I would truly encourage you to do is gain an understanding of the important but unmet customer needs. If, in case, you're truly working on an innovation, you don't have the data and the fundamental unmet needs have not or normally are not changing. So to make one example, so 100 years ago, we needed to go to our offices, perhaps use the train, yeah. And we wanted to be entertained while we travel. So 100 years ago, that fundamental customer need was fulfilled by me purchasing a newspaper and reading out on the train. Yeah. That is how it worked. 100 years ago, the need is today still the same. We still travel to our job with a car, potentially, or with a train and on the train, or we read the iPhone, yeah, still with us on it, or something, yeah. So it's just the mechanism has changed. The fundamental customer need has not changed. So what you want to analyze, in case you don't have the data, is you want to identify important but unmet customer needs, or at least partially only met unmet customer needs. And these you can analyze with statistical stability, with statistical predictability, and that is a good basis for innovation, which gives you certainty that is the next best thing you can resort to. In case you have more than a fundamental you have a you have a more fundamental change ahead. What

Greg Voisen
are some of the things that you would say are are truly, truly innovative that you've seen come out in the last year. Because, you know, as I see it sitting here right now, I'm thinking as you're talking right like, okay, have I seen anything fundamentally which has been revolutionary in nature? Meaning, like, whoa. It really made a change. I see all kinds of people doing products. Obviously, we've seen now so many iterations of the of the electric car, right? Everything from Tesla to you name it, everybody's in the electric car space. But fundamentally, there hasn't been much significant change in in the range the battery, the ability to get better range, and so on and so forth. So driving, man, yeah, well, yeah, there, there is the car in Google. I was just in San Francisco last week. And what if it's a it's all self driving. They're actually Jaguars that are, that's what they they put on them. They're pretty fascinating to do that. So you're saying that that's one of the most radical things maybe you've seen is this autonomous, self driving taxicab. What's it called? It starts with a W, I can't think of it,

right, which Hilo must just try to launch and which was also a fake,

Greg Voisen
yeah, yep, exactly. So have you noticed anything from your side? Because you see so much more than I do, that you would say, Oh, wow. This is really, really true and innovation which is going to revolutionize the world.

Well, arguably, we have seen the rise of artificial intelligence was the first prominent product which has taken the world by storm in the last 18 months. Yeah, and that is going to revolutionize the world. I think everybody is starting to use it now, and it even replaces Google search. So this is as fundamentally is about to fundamentally change the world. We have also seen what I found like totally fascinating rockets that can be reused, that can land again. That was fascinating. However, in total, I'm a little bit critical, but I'm seeing less innovation than I think there should be out there. Companies are fundamentally not investing heavily in innovation. It's a huge deception across industries. They are just invent, investing 1% very roughly, of their revenues and innovation. And the outcomes we are seeing are much smaller than what you could be thinking, yeah, that is very unfortunate. And, I mean, we still don't have everything we learned from Star Trek in the last decade. So

Greg Voisen
I you know one that I'm thinking of while you're speaking, actually, and I just saw a special on it was the company in Denmark, the drug company, that came out with all the weight loss products, we go, V is one of them. And the other one is, I can't remember the name of it, but they were actually saying that this company, Novo Vardis, is that name of it? Yeah, and Denmark that what's happened is the this one company has added three times the GNP to the whole country. So in the amount of money that this company is making now, it's like a 1.5 trillion right now and continuing to grow. So what's happening in Denmark is kind of this revolutionary jobs housing prices have been able to keep down all of this kind of stuff is going on. And it was fascinating to see how that company evolved in the innovation. It was one woman who didn't want money for it, who actually innovated it in the lab by looking at the these particular cells and how they work. But I would say that that's pretty revolutionary, when you think about how much money is being spent on a weight loss drug, right? So exactly,

and perhaps, and it's fascinating. I think the company is called Novozymes. But what I think is fascinating is what is perhaps a shock, is why does something like that get talked over us that much. I mean, are we all too fat? The most exciting thing that could happen to us? And it seems like, and it's little bit of a deception. I mean, we're still not flying around or can beam us around the earth and have get nutritions. I mean, there are so many things which possibly should be happening and which which we have seen in our science fiction books when we were kids. Yeah, we are still far away from and now we are talking the most important thing, Greg and I managed to discuss last thing that happened in Myanmar, like, seriously.

Greg Voisen
Well, what I'm waiting for is the whole Star Trek, when you can beam me up and beam me down. So when you get that one figured out, and I can actually end up in Switzerland to interview you, you at your house, and then I can beam myself back. I'm I'm on for that one. But the key here was leadership. You know, now I cite that drug company because the the leadership was really an important factor. Also, the company is 100 and something years old, so from the founders down, how they really think about what they do with that money that they bring in, leadership is often cited as a critical factor, as you say, driving innovation. What leadership qualities do you think are most essential for fostering this innovative organization. Now, I listened to the CEO of that drug company talk, and he is the leader, and in most cases he'd be wake making way more than 10 million but they capped his salary at 10 million in Denmark because there's a correlation, right? And it was fascinating, what the company the freedom that they gave the employees and individuals to actually be able to innovate, their autonomy, to work on things, bring things to the forefront. I would say that whole autonomy element was the first thing that impressed me. You have some insights on that, because you work with leaders all the time.

So and it's absolutely the right kind of observation. So I mean, if we look back and go back in history, we go to the medieval ages, perhaps we had super steep hierarchies. That's still how our armies function. Yeah, you have the boss sitting at the top, and he ordains to the rest. And what happened over the last decades is that the hierarchies went flatter and they went flatter again to enable more people. But fundamentally, that principle, that we're still in the pyramid principle somebody at the top dictates just less middle management, perhaps around. But there's still the pyramid principle, and then innovative organizations, perhaps the pyramid then tilts and is perhaps then reversed. The leader is suddenly at the bottom to support those at the top. Or we actually don't have a leader anymore, and we arrive at a circular structure, organization structure where decisions are made together by colleagues who trust in each other, where the communication paths are much shorter, etc. So the entire role of leadership has changed from one who knows it all and to therefore could ordain which works in a known context, to, yes, the insight that we are indeed in a new we need new ways of doing. Therefore the leader me can't know it all. Therefore I trust in the team around me. I enable it, and I'm either at the bottom or I'm perhaps not present anymore, and we are making decisions together. So the leader is or the leadership of a large organization. Perhaps they offer the freedom and they offer fundamental capabilities to the teams, but the teams are self enabled can do what they want. I mean, with, of course, guidance, perhaps that they should be going in certain directions and leverage certain elements, but fundamentally, we lead by trust. We go away from line management to innovation and to project management. We think in networks and not in silos anymore. We don't have a top down structure, but a value creation structure, and we have, perhaps, other mechanisms of organizing ourselves that are no more bureaucratic in nature. So we think about sociocracy or holacracy, or networked organization, things like that. Now this is, I guess, the fundamental aspect that have changed.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, holacracy definitely is a term that's being used more and more. It hasn't been for some time. I like that concept that you you brought up, and for all my listeners, definitely go back in my podcast. I actually did two podcasts on people that wrote books just on holacracy. Fascinating concept, but So in your opinion, leading more to the future trends and the challenges and changes. How should companies balance the need for disruptive innovation with the necessity to maintain stability in their core business operations? So okay, so here's just, let's use apple. All right, AI comes out. They come up with the phone 16. Their core operations is obviously the sales of computers and this, and their software side of things, and their iTunes and all the rest of the things, the markets that they've captured. But in essence, that's their core business. That's always been their core business. Now, fundamentally, this last year, we saw them come out with the with the 3d glasses, right? The they came out with that a while ago. They actually Google came out the glasses. But I'm talking about the the whole thing that you could go into the alternate worlds in right? I don't own a pair, but it has been an area, and they've said that actually, that $3,000 innovation that they've put tons of money into has really not paid off. There hasn't been that big of acceptance of that. And so their core business operations, while maintaining it, they needed to come up with disruptive innovation. Would you consider something like that disruptive? Or just, hey, it was another player with another product.

Well, it's basically an entirely new product category that suddenly we could wear intelligent glasses and not carry around laptops and plus, with the vision capabilities that it can immersively see the environment, enrich your direct eye view, are of course, game changing technology. So yes, this is, of course, disruptive. It's an entire newly new product category which could potentially change the world. Is the world ready? Apparently not yet. Is the technology ready? Apparently not yet either. And Apple isn't the only company who is struggling with that. Yeah. I mean, Facebook has made an even bigger bet on that technology, and they're equally struggling. I think what you can learn from that is the biggest fad that I've seen in recent years is, let's establish a culture of innovation everywhere. Yeah, this is what many CEOs postulated. And I think this is not all about it, while on the opposite, if you look at Apple, they have massive manufacturing going on in Asia. These are not guys who do innovation. They manufacture, and that is hundreds of 1000s of jobs which are focused on manufacturing. Apple has offices around the world. These are about sales. They're not about innovation, either. So I would estimate that 95% of Apple's organization is clearly not about innovation. They're either about manufacturing or sales. And a few guys at the lonely headquarter in Cupertino and Silicon Valley. They are about innovation. They take it seriously to develop the next big thing. So

Greg Voisen
this is, well, obviously I don't have their budget, but I would say, out of the budget they have, they must have a pretty good sum of money allocated to innovation to keep pace. But I do find certain companies fall short, right? And the younger, more nimble companies coming up actually come up with, usually the innovations that we see huge differences in the innovations. It isn't always these big, behemoth companies that's where they have a challenge getting dragged down, which is keeping their current operations going. Like you said, marketing and sales is 95% of what they do. So, you know, moving forward, if somebody's out there listening to this right now, as a CEO of a company, recognizes they're a little light on the side of innovation, meaning light in the amount of investment, the amount of people, and they'd like to move forward. What is one piece of advice that you would give to the leaders who are just beginning the journey toward creating this innovative organization?

So I guess first of all, I mean, innovation can be controlled. It can be engineered, as we said initially, and I think this is what we have laid out with that book. So I would start, please go ahead, please read the book. Please educate yourself about those best and leading practices. They are defined leverage those, as opposed to running the era of applying your usual thinking and your usual procedures to innovation. That's not how it works. We have it figured out. It's defined out there. Go and leverage those best practices, get the right kind of teams in place and hit the ground running. Never shy away from it, but be bold, make your moves, and most organizations don't dare to go ahead. And I think this is why, in most industries, there is massive potential out there, because so little money, in the end, is invested in innovation. So if you want to be the innovation leader, most organizations have room for such an organization, so go out, be bold, leverage the processes, then the best practices, and you will have good chances of succeeding.

Greg Voisen
I think one of the things is you can't be afraid, because you never know what the investment will return. And if there is trepidation or fear on your part, I think you have to look at it as a way for an advancement. You know, I was speaking with somebody the other day, and I'll just use this as a crazy story, but there was a guy with the name of Anderson and Anderson carpet mills, and a really small thing, you know, when people lay carpet. This is a kind of a little weird example, but it's a good example. It the old carpet came coming out, never got recycled. It always went into a landfill. And so here in the United States, this guy revolutionized the industry. He said every fiber that comes out of the old carpet is going to be ground up and reused in the new carpet that my mill makes. And he revolutionized kind of the carpet business that way by actually recite just taking you think, when you Oh, you go, that's revolutionary. Well, it was kind of because he had to create all the machines and the technology to take all the fibers and pull it out and then circulate it so that it didn't end up in some landfill somewhere. And I use that example is because so many people don't even look at the obvious, right? And the obvious would be, what can we do to better help the environment around us? Okay? What can we do to better recycle these things to make sure that it's they call it Cradle to Cradle, right in your business, right Cradle to Cradle, and what I see happening is the companies that can innovate around Cradle to Cradle, the demand from the consumers out there is big. It's very big. Would you agree or not?

I fully agree. It's clearly the way this world needs to develop. Our current ways of living are not sustainable, and more sustainable, it is a big business growth imperative. It's the big story that is currently written and that will be written over the next two or three decades, and industry leaders out there, I mean, organizations who are innovating in that space will have ample opportunities to capture market itself. They have political support. There is support from the customers out there. That's one of the industries I would definitely bet on. Currently,

Greg Voisen
I would agree with you on that, and it's the same thing when you recycle a cell phone or a computer, or you go to apple and turn it in. None of us really know Stefan where it goes, right? We we know it ends up in Asia someplace, and they've got child labor pulling out pieces and parts of these phones, whether it's Android or I would assume maybe Apple has a better control of that. But I would say any of this, when you say, Hey, I'm just going to go get a new phone. Really, really think twice. Do you need a new phone? That's what I would say, if the one currently now is working. You know, maybe you don't need it, because a lot of it is just marketing hype. And I know I'm going to get a lot of pushback from people that are maybe listening to this show, but I would say be a little bit more cautious before you do things like that, because it's, it's very harmful to the environment. I don't know how many billions of phones get recycled each year, but it's a lot great. Yeah,

I think give it. I mean, we live in a very consumerist society. Think perhaps little bit more about what is truly making a difference in your life, like what is truly making you happier? Is the next iPhone making you happier, or is it something else? Because if we have everything, yeah, perhaps in the end, we have nothing, and perhaps we need to focus more on what is truly making a difference for us and for the world now and not have the next upgrade of everything in our house and gadgets.

Greg Voisen
I love your philosophy, my friend, I want to thank you for being on inside personal growth and sharing your wisdom and insight about this new book, How to create innovation. Go to digital leadership.com there. There's lots of free downloads for all of my listeners. Truly get involved with this. I mean, dig deep into this. If you got a company, buy one of these books for everybody in your innovation department and have meetings around it. Truly dig into the content. And you can also reach out to Stefan too, through the website and all of the people, the network of people that he's really developed. I mean, I don't know. Was there 60 other authors involved with this? Was it 60

call team of 60 people in the community, of 300 giving feedback now? So a massive

Greg Voisen
project that he undertook. Kudos to you for getting it accomplished, and also kudos to Wiley for actually wanting to actually take this book on and do it, because it was a big project. Thank you so much. Namaste to you. Thank you for everything. Thanks for being on inside personal growth.

Thank you so much. Have a good evening.