Innovation 1-on-1's blog

Jonah Staw, LittleMissMatched

Innovation 1-on-1 — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 14:11:49 -0500

Jonah Staw, co-founder and CEO of LittleMissMatched, heads-up a lifestyle brand that is based on "innovative and creative mixing and mismatching." LittleMissMatched launched in 2004 with a collection of mismatched socks sold in odd numbers to encourage girls of all ages to express themselves. The "nothing matches but anything goes" philosophy knocked people's socks off, and sales jumped from $5 million to $25 million in just three years. Today, the LittleMissMatched product line includes everything from socks, winterwear, and sleepwear to books, bedding, and furniture for mismatched mavens of all ages. LittleMissMatched products range in retail price from $5 to $1,200 and are available at specialty boutiques and department stores nationwide. The company just announced $17.3 million in private equity funding, expanded distribution, a new flagship store in Manhattan, and a series of new products. How do you define innovation? Innovation is such a broad term. I was recently on a McKinsey panel discussing innovation, and we opened by going around the room. There were more than 25 chief strategy officers from major US corporations. The moderator asked what was the most innovative product, and 90% of the audience said the iPod. I said the Post-It Note. Why? It is so simple it's obvious. It has become a fixture on the physical American desktop. It is useful. It invented a new category…before there were note cards, stationary, thumb tacks and more. Now we have the Post-it. Innovations are simple, elegant solutions that make things better. Better doesn't necessarily mean more efficient…it could be more fun, easier to use, beautiful. You get the point. What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization? My company is 100% based on innovation. We created a company that was founded on the premise of selling three-packs of non-matching socks. Talk about a challenge -- we were completely changing the way people got dressed each morning. We set out to tell the world that it was okay to not match your socks and as such, you should buy them in a novel way. Our socks are uniquely paired to look great together. What we discovered is that our socks are something that are simply FUN. They are so fun that people what to tell their friends about them. Our customers lift their pant legs and say, "Hey check out my socks!," this is certainly innovation in the world of socks. Our challenge is to translate this innovation into other product categories so that our brand is cohesive. At LittleMissMatched we believe that simple product innovations make our success. People will talk about our products if we give them unique products that are easy to talk about. We have furniture that you can draw all over with a dry erase pen. Why have you ever done that before? We have bedding that flips and switches to make 192 combos in one bed set. For us, innovation is key to our long term success. The good news is that every product category in the world can be missmatchified. What is your most successful innovation? How did you find it? It depends on how we define success. I personally love our furniture. Maybe that is because I flew to China to help finalize its development. It was a brutally challenging trip so I am enamored with the end result. If we look at units sold, our socks win the award. If we look at dollars/SKU sold, then our bedding wins. Each of these innovations were found by breaking conventional norms to bring a true value proposition to our customer. Imagine a world where now one bed in a bag we sell gives you 192 combos when all of our competition only gives you one option. When we are at our best, we subvert the marketplace…in other words, we don't talk about thread count, we talk about combos. What this means is that we don't actually have competition. Why? Because of our version of innovation! Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why? I don't ever believe in failure. I believe in learnings. Our first sock package almost disintegrated in your hand, but it was a totally unique package…it failed functionally, but it led us to where we are now. We are only four years old as a company, so each step we take is a learning. Success never happens spontaneously. As they say, "practice makes perfect." What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven? The kind of people who are innovation seekers are what I call "yes to no" people. They are the type that says, "Hey that is a really great idea, but I think it would be even better if…" They are expansive thinkers. They are not the type that says, "Nope, that idea won't work because xy or z." We have worked as hard as we can to hire "yes to no" people. We want everyone to have an open mind, but ultimately, we want them to be filters/curators at the right time so that they can make the hard decisions that will grow our business. If I can pass one lesson on, it is to hire "yes-to-no" people! In your opinion what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative? We are a small company with a short history. Our historical benchmarks are not relevant yet because we are rapidly growing. I think the biggest barriers are companies that say they want to be innovative but they don't truly plan for innovation. They look at their historical benchmarks instead of forward at the possibilities. At the McKinsey panel I described earlier, a chief strategy officer from a Fortune 500 company said, "20% of our new products are now required to be driven by innovation." I asked, "Is the company setting aside 20% of your time to develop innovation?" Of course the answer was no. Innovation doesn't just happen. Organizations must understand that they must change culturally and structurally to enable innovative thinking. Ultimately, I believe the executive office suite must also be populated by innovative thinkers or innovation doesn't have a chance of success. Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk taking innovation and what do you think makes them successful? I admire everyone trying to think differently. There are so many people innovating there isn't just one person to name. I think ultimately innovators are successful because of their passion for success. Remember Steve Jobs failed his first time at Apple and was fired by the board. A good idea isn't the key to success. It is execution, timing, market conditions and a whole lot more. What innovation are you still waiting for? If I had a list, I would be working on those innovations instead of what I am doing at LittleMissMatched! With all seriousness, I am very focused on building a brand based on creativity and innovation. I believe our brand has a broad enough foundation to explore the world!

Willem Boijens, Vodafone

Innovation 1-on-1 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:01:05 -0500

In this installment, Willem Boijens, Senior User Experience Manager at Vodafone in Dusseldorf, Germany, takes on the questions. Willem has had a wide variety of roles at Vodafone and has seen the large wireless services company from many angles. In his current role he aims to make experiential design a catalyst for innovation, ensuring that customer needs are kept at the forefront but also balanced with the many other factors of business, technology, partners and marketing which must be considered.

Q. How do you define "innovation"?

A: Innovation is directly related to the 'creative act'. Creating something new implies innovation. Materialized through incremental improvements or breakthrough experiences. The essence of innovation is still appropriate. However, in times when corporations make innovation a policy for reinventing themselves rather than a 'raison d'etre' it often becomes wishful thinking. True innovation can be encouraged and staged but hardly regulated.

Q. What was your most important innovation, and how did you find it?

A: The symbiotic relationship between communication and content.

Q. What is the best idea you've ever had and haven't yet executed?

A: A true immersive information architecture

Q. Which design "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

A: Live a design agenda driven by downstream briefs rather creating upstream demand.

Q. What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

A: Manage a value-based portfolio by balancing validating/incremental activities with envisioning/breakthrough. Be a catalyst for debate.

Q. In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

A: Politics, not invented here, (lack of) talent(s)

Q. Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

A: No specific individual but all that impacts the way people think about and live their lives which eventually forms society. Current risk-taking trend is sustainability.

Q. What innovation are you still waiting for?

A: Humanized technology

Chris Heatherly, The Walt Disney Company

Innovation 1-on-1 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:18:15 -0500

We asked Chris Heatherly, vice president of technology and innovation, Disney Consumer Products, The Walt Disney Company, to answer our set of questions -- and he took the time to dive a little deeper.

How do you define "innovation?"

My favorite quote about innovation is one where Steve Jobs was asked how they systematize innovation at Apple and he said "We don't. We hire good people." I think a lot of talk about innovation amounts to a lot of dancing about architecture. People get caught up in trying to have an innovative “process” instead of having their values where they should be – making great product. To borrow from James Carville, "It's the product, stupid!" Who cares what your process is? It's what you put out there that matters.

If you want to make great products, you have to have high standards and absolutely insist on those standards. There’s a great story about Pixar and the making of Toy Story 2. They completed most of the movie and then decided they didn’t like how it was coming out. So they scraped it and started from scratch. How many companies have the guts to do that? Not many.

But I haven’t answered your question. I think innovation is understanding people and what they need and giving them the most perfect solution you can to their problem even if they might not know they have it yet. It’s giving people something new that they haven't seen before or making them re-experience something familiar in a totally new and better way. Everyone talks about Apple. The reason we all worship Apple is that there is no detail too small for them to sweat out. They don't stop at trying to make a great product. Look at the packaging. They work to reduce materials, to improve communications, to reduce shipping costs, to have better environmentally friendly materials, to create a great out of box experience, and on and on. Once you live and breathe these principles you can’t compartmentalize. You have to make everything as great as it can be. It becomes a way of life.

I think too many people confuse innovation and technology. I have seen a lot of designers try to make a mediocre concept innovative by putting Bluetooth or some other whiz bang technology du jour in it. That’s not innovation. It's cheating. Innovation is about solving problems for people. As I write this, I am at the New York Toy Fair. I am always so impressed and humbled by the incredible cleverness and simple innovation in small things that toy designers and inventors do every day. I think the technology business could learn a lot from these guys. The toy business has to work with very cheap stuff so they can't fall back on expensive technology. They really have to make the magic trick out of Popsicle sticks and rubber bands, if you take my meaning. Yesterday, I saw a company that makes bubbles that you can't spill. Brilliant! I bet a lot of people have looked at bubbles and said "How can you innovate bubbles? There's nothing you can do. They’re just bubbles." But this guy did and now he has a huge business because it turns out that parents don't buy as many bubbles for their kids as they might because they are afraid they will spill them and make a mess. To me, that’s real innovation. A simple clever idea well executed that makes things better for people.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization (product, process, IP, marketing, etc.)?

To be a creative company, you have to have a creative core, whatever that means for your company. For Disney, that’s people like storytellers, animators, and Imagineers. For a company like Apple, it's designers and engineers. The people at the core of what you do have to be the heart that pumps innovation through the vessels of the organization. You can't live without your heart. But the other parts of the organization have just as important a role in innovation. Take technology, for example. Pixar is very clear that it is about telling stories and that everyone who is there is there for that purpose. Technology plays a really important role for them. They like to say that "art challenges technology and technology inspires art." They don’t look at technology as being a second-class citizen to their artists. It's a respected peer. There are lots of other parts of the organization that have to be part of an innovative mission. Here's one people don't put in a sentence with innovation very often – legal. Look at Google. They are constantly doing things with search and indexing and now with YouTube that challenge the legal status quo. If they had a legal team whose only role was to keep the company from getting sued, they would never do those things. If you want to be innovative, everyone has to be on board for the mission. Everyone has a role to play.

But one of the keys to innovation is having management that expects and drives innovation. You can have the best designers in the world and the worst management and nothing good will come of it. You have to have leaders who believe and have guts and support innovative work. You have to have leaders who hire the best talent and weed out the people who have the wrong values and intentions, but who at the same time are extremely tolerant of good people making mistakes or failing sometimes. If you manage quarter by quarter or have no tolerance for failure, you won’t ever have innovation, no matter how creative your people are. You have to be willing to loose.

What would you consider your most successful innovation? How did you "find" it?

I'm very critical and I always think we can do better than we have done in the past. My favorite stuff – no matter when you ask me – is in the future and stuff I normally can't talk about it publicly.

My recent favorite innovation is a new technology called Clickables that we are launching in connection to our new Disney Fairies virtual world. It's a way for kids to take their online world experience into the real world. The core of it is a magical bracelet. By simply clicking their bracelets together, girls become friends in the online environment. And it's safer too because if you had to physically click with your friend that means they were in physical proximity to you, you saw them, and you know who they are. They aren’t some random person online. Also, it allows kids to download virtual objects from their inventory and trade with their friends, which is another complicated thing we made simple. Most online worlds don't let you trade because it's hard to authenticate. We made that simple and seamless.

How did we find the idea? We knew that online worlds were going to be a big deal and so we got about 50 of our smartest people together from different divisions and of different job types – marketing people, technology people, designers, even finance people and lawyers – and we had a big brainstorm. We have a great process for brainstorms that's led by our head of creative Len Mazzocco. He's like the Michael Jordan of brainstorming. We came up with probably a few hundred ideas but narrowed it down to 75 really good ones from the two days. Then we narrowed it down to our top 10 and top 5 and in there was the nugget of the Clickables concept. Then we decided that this was such an important area that we would create a dedicated team around it, called our Toymorrow team that would be a little swat team focused on technology in the toy space. We moved really aggressively to find partners who shared our vision and had applicable technology. Speed is of the essence in these things. Len always says that "God gives everyone the same ideas at the same time." If you don't move fast, someone else will have your idea and do it before you can get it to market.

My other favorite recent product is a digital camera we made for preschoolers called Disney Pix Jr. I love it because it is so simple and so rugged and just does what it says it will do. I threw one myself down a flight of concrete stairs 20 times and couldn't break it. And the interface is so simple. We even got rid of the on button! And we have a fun feature on it called PhotoFriends that lets you pose with a Disney character in your picture. Kids are having a lot of fun with that. But for me, that is a great product because it meets the need and does what it says it’s going to do. It doesn't read your mind or have WiFi or cure cancer or any of that. It’s just a great camera for kids. It is what it’s supposed to be. Not a lot of products, especially technology products, can say that.

Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

That's easy. The Disney Dream Desk PC. We had all the right ideas in the beginning. We wanted to make an inexpensive computer without all the doodads in a small form factor about twice the size of the Mac Mini (you couldn’t make it smaller back then because the processor was so hot) with a creative software suite a la iLife but for kids and with robust parental controls. I am proud of the way the software and Internet filtering came out. But the PC grew from this small inexpensive thing to this almost full sized PC that was not as kid-like as we wanted and was much more expensive than we originally planned. If we had kept with our original idea, we would have had the OLPC four years before Negroponte. That was the hardest project of my life and I can’t say I didn’t fight hard. But our partner didn’t share our vision. They thought it was imperative that it have all the slots and expansion and all the stuff parents probably don’t really care about when they buy a kid a PC but that geeks care about a great deal. I thought we could change them, that we would convince them. But I felt compelled to launch and I wound up compromising in some areas I didn't want to. I learned from that. Your partners need to share your vision or you will never get the result you want. I believe it's Louis Armstrong that said "There’s some people, if they don't listen, you can't tell them." You have to stick to principles. If the people you work with don't want to do the project right, it's not worth doing.

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows that Disney has had some major changes in the past few years with a new CEO – Bob Iger – and the acquisition of Pixar. We are getting back to our roots. Focusing on quality, incredible storytelling, and the magic people expect of us. Bob's really focused on bringing the company together as a team and put quality and innovation at the forefront of the company's agenda. What he's done is create a great collaborative environment for innovation and the rest has taken care of itself. You can see the whole company flourishing right now.

In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

The organizations are their own biggest barriers. A lot of things that big companies do that they think are conservative and prudent are actually very foolhardy and dangerous. It's said that cynicism is ignorance masquerading as wisdom. Business is very simple. You have to offer a product that is better than your competition and you have to keep your customers happy. A lot of big companies get caught up in other things. Managing a P&L is important and money keeps the lights on. But if people don't like the product or service you are putting out there, it doesn't really matter how clever you were about saving costs here and there. When you're dead, it doesn't really matter why. You can't cut your way to glory. Look at Apple. In the last recession, everyone else laid people off and cut back on R&D. Apple said "We are going to innovate our way out of this." And look what happened for them. You can't stop innovating.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

Apple is too obvious, so I'll say Target. At a time when everyone was trying to follow Wal-Mart into the bargain bin, Target had a vision that everyone deserved nicely designed products. A lot of people thought they were talking over their audiences' heads or they were full of themselves. In fact, everyone else was underestimating the intelligence and taste of their guests and Target saw something no one else did. But Target innovated in a lot less obvious ways too. Take queue lines. At a lot of big box stores, you could spend 20 minutes waiting to check out. At Target, you will wait less than 5 minutes most of the time. If the register is stacked up more than 3 people deep, they will open another one. That's customer service. Today, Target is beating all of their competitors' comps and doing more business per door than anyone else. Not everything has worked for Target. Remember the short-lived Philippe Starck line? But they keep trying and more often than not, they succeed.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

I think the single most important innovation we all need is low-cost green energy. Energy is the United States' #1 trade issue, #1 security, #1 economic issue, and #1 environmental issue. Green energy will have a more transformative effect on the world than the Internet, it's that big. Outside of this, I am working a lot with robotics these days and I'm very excited about all this smart technology that will make its way into lots of products. I live in LA and we are (in)famous for our traffic. I would love us all to have robotic cars that could figure out traffic flow so I never have to sit through a traffic jam again.

Timothy Schigel, ShareThis

Innovation 1-on-1 — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:47:51 -0600

Timothy Schigel is the founder and CEO of ShareThis, which "lets people easily share the things they find online, in the most convenient way possible." ShareThis consolidates address books and friend lists, so that anything can be shared immediately, without even leaving a webpage. Since its launch, the ShareThis button has been installed by thousands of publishers, generating 100 million plus views from more than 26 million unique users every month.

Timothy has led technology investing for the past ten years at Blue Chip Venture Company, an early stage venture firm with $600 million under management, investing in leading companies such as Advertising.com, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and Third Screen Media. Prior to Blue Chip, he was a technology entrepreneur and international consultant leading innovative projects for Apple Computer, Hitachi, Hallmark Cards, Motorola, and Procter & Gamble. Tim received his Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

How do you define "innovation?"

There are degrees of innovation, but at its core I would submit that innovation is the result of applying a non-obvious modification to a system resulting in improvements to quality, performance or cost that exceed current expectations. Breakthrough innovations seem to change our definition of a system or product itself.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization (product, process, IP, marketing, etc.)?

In our case I would say that "perspective" is the most important area for innovation. Once you have re-defined the problem, opportunities for innovation seem to be everywhere. In addition, applying state-of-the-art science to new problems creates real proprietary advantage.

What would you consider your most successful innovation? How did you "find" it?
Disconnecting the process of sharing from specific content and communities, which was found through conversations and observations with stakeholders which exposed limitations and challenges of current systems.

Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

Pushing a technically elegant solution into a market that was not prepared to embrace it. This experience demonstrated the need for several factors to be true for market success, most importantly timing. Good ideas should be tested as early as possible and pursued if the demand is compelling and urgent.

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?

It’s still early for us, but I would suggest that continuously asking the question "what problem does this solve?" keeps the organization focused on what's important. In turn, focus drives opportunities for innovation.

In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

Losing focus. It's easy to be distracted by things that really don’t matter at the end of the day.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

Steve Jobs. He's willing to take big risks. I admire someone who knows his customers, but is also willing to lead and follow his or her intuition. It's very similar to the creative process in art or music. Most of the best known music was created because the author liked it and thought it was good. Polls and opinions can only take you so far.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

Teleportation.

Manoj Kothari, Onio Design

Innovation 1-on-1 — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:27:08 -0600

This is the first in a series of interviews with innovation thought leaders. We've reached out to innovators in marketing, design, strategy, and operations -- from start-ups, small-medium sized business, Fortune 500 companies, academia, to non-profits -- and asked them to answer the same set of questions.

We're kicking the series off with Manoj Kothari, founder and managing director of Onio Design, one of the leading design and innovation consultancies in India. A graduate of IIT Bombay and the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, Manoj orchestrates trend research, strategic consulting, and design management practice at Onio. Manoj is a frequent speaker at various forums on innovation, trends, and design.

How do you define "innovation"?

It is as basic as food, clothing, and shelter in the broadest sense.

What was your most successful innovation, and how did you find it?

For a person whose profession is innovation, it is hard to point out one idea that "would change life." Every idea has its own destiny.

What is the best idea you've ever had and haven't yet executed?

To make a film on Siddhartha -- by Herman Hesse.

Which design "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?

Simple lessons on prototyping: We took some calculations for granted and prepared the whole pilot lot of metal stands to hold 20 liter water bottles. In front of the client the 100 stands gave way...

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation-driven?

1. Never begin before sensing enough.

2. Do not judge an idea instantly. Hold it in your mind for some time.

3. Do not work only on one idea. Create a 'family' and the 'succession plan' before launching the work.

4. Never undermine the insights that may come through prototyping.

5. Detailing at the early stages is key to smooth implementation.

6. Unless the top team agrees, innovation is a headless chicken.

In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?

Unlimited vision is only with limited people.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?

Vision, driven by guts and gut-feel. There are several small and big time people around.

What innovation are you still waiting for?

I wish cars could fly and reduce the traffic on the ground (especially in the context of India).