The Innovation Code

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The hidden elements behind innovation are disharmony, disruption, disagreement and contrasting. That is what innovation is made of. Innovation is about constructive, creative, positive tension. A clash makes innovation possible in a team; agreement dissolves it. 

The Innovation code by Jeff DeGraff and Staney DeGraff introduces a framework that shows and explains how different kinds of leaders and thinkers can stir up constructive conflict in the organization. This positive, creative tension produces inventive solutions from both resources. DeGraff discovered the hidden inspiration in harnessing the creative energy that arises from opposing perspectives. The discovered force to sharpen creative innovations is through contrasting ideas.

DeGraff identified four contrasting styles of innovators:

  1. The Artist who loves radical innovation)
  2. The Sage who innovate through collaboration)
  3. The Engineer who continually improves on everything)
  4. The Athlete who competes to develop the best innovation). 

In addition, he included assessments and what to do to build, manage and embrace dynamic disagreement in a team that contains all four. You can discover which style best defines you and each of your team member as well.  Your dominant worldview makes you know how you sort and manage challenges. Your quality makes you outstand the crowd, and that is where the need to discover your biggest weakness comes in. 

Outside the interview room, take time to realize that secret about yourself without clouding your judgment with your world perspective. When the dominant worldview overpowers all other point of views, you tend to have a blind spot and become a prisoner of your ideology. Worldview is how we interpret and experience the world based on our belief and mindset. A worldview is more than a style; it is a collection of different opinions. We all have our dominant worldview, a particular conception of the world from a specific standpoint. This standpoint can be generated from personal experience, culture, and society at large.  DeGraff concluded that the most significant obstacle we face on the path of innovation is YOU, while the greatest solution is combining different perspectives and hybrids of ideas. So it is essential we learn to let go of our preconceptions and biases.

When you can identify your greatest weakness and strength, you get enough insight to select your team of superheroes, a band that can give you a significant push to create things you cannot work on your own. People who are unlike you are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with. But first, get to know the worst part of yourself and the right part of yourself. ​

Innovation code shows how to play to win the innovation game irrespective of your organization, team and associates. No one ever says innovation is easy; innovation code does not gloss over innovation like its simple and easy either, instead it tackles the hardest element which is how to create a constructive conflict and use it to innovate.  In this book, DeGraff shares his insight from his experience with many organizations to create a practical print for all innovators. 

The Big Three: Key Points

Key Point #1

You must know how to stir up constructive conflict in an organization and how to manage different innovation styles within an organization or team.

Key Point #2

There are four contrasting styles of innovators: The Artist, the Sage, the Engineer and the Athlete.

Key Point #3

People who are unlike you are the kind of people you need to surround yourself with. But first, get to know the worst part of yourself and the right part of yourself.

One Last Thing 

“The best teams are like a band of superheroes” – Jeff DeGraff

The One Thing

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The one thing by Gary W Keller and Jay Papasan is focused on understanding that one thing you need to focus on to make you successful. Not all tasks on your to-do list matter equally. There are some that are of high importance and consistently give a successful result, that is the ONE THING we are referring to. Sometimes it is the only thing you do, sometimes; it is the first thing you do. Whatever ways you handle it, there is always a key phrase that says doing the most important is the most important thing to do. You have to make the hard things easy to do by disciplining yourself.

Things become easier after you have discipline yourself and establish that habit not only the thing you trained yourself for. The key point is, aim for bigger achievement, dream big, follow peoples trail and don’t be scared o fail. Sometimes we blindly believe in some lies that sound like truth and this has a great impact on your productivity. Some of these lies are multitasking, everything matters equally, a balance etc. Gary and Jay made us understand that there is nothing like multitasking, equality, willpower. They are all lies. It is much advisable to do fewer things for more effect than doing many things with side effects. Successful people work with a clear sense of priority and not from junks of priorities. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan reminded us again of the 80/20 principle. He shared in his book that we don’t need a To Do list; instead we need a success list. A success list is a list designed purposefully around your highest leverage activities. Your leverage activities can be determined using the 80/20 principle. The principle states that the MINORITY of your effort is what leads to the MAJORITY of your result. Your little investment today will yield a bigger result of what you will experience. So most importantly, you have to understand those minute tasks, those little tasks you should divert your 20% attention to that will yield 80% impact on your results. With this, you have been able to turn your to-do list into success list. Gary continues, “You can do two things at a time but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once. The truth is when you focus on two things you feel you are multitasking without paying cognizance to the fact that your attention is being divided and something is serving as a distraction at that particular time. I admire a quote that says take up two things, and your attention gets divided, take on three things, and somethings get dropped. The buzz, flash, pings on your phones can wait or be avoided by shutting down your phone just for the limited period you need to concentrate. People who seem like they are highly disciplined has conditioned a handful habits into their lives. Developing a habit takes an average of 66 days, with your willpower and persistence you can turn your discipline into a habit and things become easier to execute. In summary, your willpower each day is limited so use it wisely and do the most important things first so that you will not miss it.

The Big Three – Key points

Key Point #1: Do fewer things and get more effect rather than doing many things with side effects

Key Point #2: Discipline can be groomed into a habit

Key Point #3: Work with your success list and not your To Do list

One Last Thing 

“Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls– family, health, friends, integrity– are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”
― Gary Keller

Zero to One

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This book is composed of Peter Thiel’s advice on startups with different take away such as the DO’s and DON’TS of startups, what to focus on when building a startup, insight of building a billion-dollar startup that stands the test of time and many more. He gave an illustration of the first team he built which is known as the “PayPal Mafia” who have gone out to help each other start and invest in successful tech companies. They sold PayPal to eBay in 2002 for $1.5billion. Ever since then:

  •    Elon Musk has founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla Motors
  •    Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn
  •    Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim together founded YouTube
  •    Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons founded Yelp
  •    David Sacks co-founded Yammer
  •    and Thiel himself co-founded Palantir
  • And today, all these seven companies are worth over $1billion.  

This book begins with Peter’s favorite interview question which is, “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”  He justifies this question by saying that “brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is even shorter than genius”. He further says that globalization without new technology in a world of scarce resources is unsustainable. Because the truth is that technology matters more in globalization. The best way to create wealth is not by spreading old ways but by innovation. And to introduce innovation, we have startups. He points out that competitive market destroys profit. He said, “if you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you are saner than most.” To get more capital, you need to be a monopolist and escape competition. You may think monopolies are bad but thinking of it in a world where it’s possible to invent new things, it brings about more creativity and innovations. Creative monopolists add new categories to the categories of products available, thereby giving customers more varieties to choose from.

What makes a monopoly durable? What does a company with large cash flows far into the future look like? There are four key characteristics to describe:

  1. Proprietary technology
  2. Network effects (aka virility)
  3. Simple scalability
  4. Branding

Peter’s next favorite question is “What valuable company is nobody building?” You get a valuable company when you create value and capture value. If you want to create and capture value as an entrepreneur, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. The author makes the difference between a perfectly competitive market and a monopoly and explains how both companies are trying to disguise themselves. The author takes us through various schools of thought of startups in each chapter of his book. Some of which are: the ideology of competition which explains why people compete, secrets which reveal why people are not looking for secrets and why companies need to stop believing in secrets, the mechanics of mafia and so on.

He concluded by asking the question: Stagnation or Singularity? It all depends on us. Our task today is to find singular ways to create new things that will make the future transpire from Zero to One. The critical step is to think for yourself, see the world anew, afresh and as strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first. Then we can recreate it and preserve it for the future. Whatever decision you make today, determines the success we experience tomorrow. So think critically and take action not by acting upon a created solution but by searching out a unique problem and proffering a solution to it.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1:  The author encourages monopolization other than perfect competition

Key point #2:   Leverage on the power of exponential growth

Key point #3: Don’t just invent a product; invent an efficient way of selling it.

One Last Thing

“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

THE OUTLIERS

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The Outliers is structured around a series of case studies, cultures and time periods that are all related to same theories and thesis. According to Malcolm, success has nothing to do with high intelligence, level of genius or innate ability. Instead, success is based on prior investment of hard work, creativity, time, support and opportunity. Gladwell says it is that simple. Your culture, legacy and environment also play a part. He backed his point using various case studies of triumph and success. When an opportunity presents itself, you must be prepared and ready to maximize on it. That is not the point where you begin your preparation. Your prior preparation will determine if you will seize the opportunity or lose it. There is no shortcut to mastery. You must put in the work.

Below is a quick summary of the six key points Malcolm Gladwell takes us through:

Opportunity: Success rarely comes to those who struggle to break from the norm. There must be at least a glimmer of talent in you to achieve success. Opportunity gives you the chance to access coaches and tools that you need to build your skills. Those tools prepare you for a more robust opportunity. Gladwell considers remarkable individuals in this section such as Bill Joy, Robert Oppenheimer, Bill Gates and an unsung intellectual Chris Langan.

Timing: Timing is crucial and critical to success and opportunity. When and where you are born can influence your opportunity. 14 of the 75 richest people in history were born between 1860’s and 1870’s when the industrial revolution was taking off. Also in 1935, there were fewer babies born, roughly 600,000, which means a smaller class size. During this period, there were greater chances of getting into college, good sports team or even getting a good job in better firms.

 

Upbringing: The quality of the upbringing a child receives also influences his/her success. Parents that are more involved in their kids’ lives provide them with opportunities that lead to the child’s success. This can include enrolling them in summer school, taking them to museums and assisting with their homework. Kids that do not have parental care or affection tend to lose more opportunity.

10,000 hours: It typically takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something. You must invest that amount of your time.

Meaningful Work: You must invest hard and meaningful work to get the best out of it. Meaningful work makes you want to put in more hours. For instance, immigrants value and practice hard work. Sociologist Louise Farkas confirmed this while studying the immigrants family tree. He found out that the offspring became professionals and successful. She concluded that in spite of their humble background, they have been trained to value and practice hard work.

Legacy: Value drives legacy. Our values are passed down to us from generation to generation which directly affects our current behavior. Dutch psychologist, Geer Hofstede, did an analysis on different country’s cultural tendencies. He identified different dimensions such individualism, collectivism, uncertainty, avoidance and power distance index. Gladwell believes the society of one’s ancestors has a tendency of determining one’s practice and preference, even in the present day.

The Big Three – Key Points:

Key Point #1    Success has nothing to do with level of genius or IQ. It has more to do   with hard work, culture, society, and opportunity.

Key Point #2    Success comes to those who are ready to become a master in what they do.

Key Point #3    To be successful you must be ready to seize opportunities.

 

One Last Thing

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Peter Drucker is known to be the most famous management author of the century. This book does not treat innovation as an academic subject but outstandingly written with rich organizational life examples using management view. The author focuses on how innovation and entrepreneurship can be learned and applied by anyone. He wants everyone to have the mindset of changing how they do things to make a massive difference. ​

This book gave a meaningful and provocative definition of innovation. Peter Drucker began by teaching innovation and entrepreneurship in the mid-1950’s putting into writing his experience from the past three decades of testing his ideas. He derived his examples from the experiences he had as a consultant and the experience of people he mentored and taught. ​

He started by drawing his readers attention to a mystery: why in the American economy between 1965-1988, despite the recession, oil shock, inflation in some government and industry, there was still a massive job growth. Most people describe the growth as “hi-tech”. The key technology driving job growth is not widget or gadget but entrepreneurship management. The force of entrepreneur is always more significant than the current state of the economy suggest Drucker. Huge successes recorded by great influencers such as McDonald were majorly due to better management of a service previously run by mom and pops owners.  Everything, from the production of the product, selling technique, the way it was served and the package was refined beyond belief. It was not the ‘hi-tech’ thing but doing things in a different, better and meaningful way and in the process creating new value. 

In this book, Drucker sees entrepreneurship has a way of doing things differently. It is not a personality trait but a feature to be observed in people’s actions and functionality. Entrepreneurs are made to upset and disorganized. He/she is a wild card that generates wealth through creative destruction. They deal with uncertainty but still have the ability to explore change and respond positively and intelligently to change.  Embracing changes and trying out different things is the best way to invest resources. Entrepreneurship becomes risky when simple and well-known rules are violated. They become less risky when it is systematically managed and purposeful.

​Innovation, on the other hand, is simple and often has nothing to do with technology or inventions. Science and technology are the least promising of all sources of innovation, Drucker suggests. He says in reality, innovation result to success when you take advantage of an unexpected change in the society. Innovation becomes a great deal when it meets the market through the catalyst of entrepreneurial management then your start creating things of great value.  Good innovation is always much focused. It is not about trying to do many things but just one thing excellently well. The most successful products are those that save effort, time, money and save their users from thinking. People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before. The book concludes with Drucker giving a clearer picture of what the future holds.

The Big Three – Key Points ​

Key Point #1: Entrepreneurship and it advises to invest in resources, explore change and respond positively to it. ​

Key Point #2: Innovation and it advises to innovation should save time, energy and provide satisfaction where there is none. ​

Key Point #3: People do not purchase a product but what the product does for them. The bigger picture of innovation is to provide satisfaction where there was none before.

One Last Thing

“Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield. Of course, there is a risk they may not succeed. But if they are even moderately successful, the returns should be more than adequate to offset whatever risk there might be.”

― Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Steve Jobs

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The author, Walter Isaacson was the former CEO of CNN and managing editor of Times Magazine. He wrote this book with Steve Jobs consent which makes it the only authorized biography about Steve Jobs. Isaacson conducted over forty interviews with Steve Jobs over the last two years before his death.

Steve Jobs grew up in a middle-class neighborhood; Job recalls that his father had a good sense of design. As Jobs was showing Isaacson around his childhood home, he couldn’t help but stop to tell a story about the fence his father built 50 years before and is still standing. He said his father had told him that it was important to craft the backs of the things he would build- like cabinets and fences even though they are hidden from view. Jobs carried this passion of creating great products with him throughout his life and career.

Steve Jobs was as fascinating as he was successful. His vision and ability to innovate left a landmark in the universe. His dream started taking form when he set out with Steve Wozniak as they launched Apple computers from their garage in Palo Alto. He was a man who created this massive vision for Apple out of his reality distortion field (RDF). What RDF means was once Steve decided that something should happen, he would bend reality to his will until it came true. This attitude extended to everyone around him. With this, he could convince a sleepless team of engineers to work another 10 hours on Macintosh font because it would become the most celebrated computer in the world.

To Jobs, the product was so important that when he came back to Apple, he decided that Jonathan Ives, the lead designer should report directly to him. In most companies, the design team does not have a seat in the boardroom. The engineering team tells the design team the specs they want, and they build a nice case around it. But at Apple, the reverse is the case; the design team tells the engineering team how they need to configure their contribution to the end product. The dominating theme of any Apple product from the beginning of the company is Simplicity. Job continually forced Apple to search for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.  Jobs believed ignoring reality is fine when you are attempting to get people to see beyond their limit. This ability does not always manifest itself in positive ways. He would demand more from his reams than anybody else could expect, often pushing people over the edge. As people who have worked with him would tell, it often worked. Jobs tells about one of his outsourced jobs which he was supposed to be working on at Atari. It was outsourced to Wozniak telling him that he needed it to be done in few days even though most engineers would take at least a few months. Wozniak finished it in four days and turned in a design that was efficient and elegant beyond belief. Jobs has used this skill multiple times in his career pushing people beyond their limit and producing remarkable results. However, the dark side surfaced when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Steve Jobs, one of the most remarkable visionary product designer and the best CEO’s of all times was a great example worth emulating when it comes to his ability to give attention to details and curiosity about how the world works.

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Steve Jobs would pull impossible feats into the realm of possible through charisma, persistence, and marketing. He operates in his reality distortion field

Key point #2: Jobs constantly force Apple to search for the simplicity on the far side of complexity

Key point #3: He chose to say no to hundred other ideas that exist by focusing on the most important things and eliminating everything else.

One Last Thing 

“One way to remember who you are is to remember who your heroes are.”
― Walter Isaacson

Hit Refresh

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Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella resolves to write Hit Refresh to have and share the blueprint of what he has in mind as regards changing the “know-it-all” culture of Microsoft to ‘learn it all.’ The new culture revolves around listening, learning more and talking less.  Hit refresh is a terrific study in changing the culture. It reveals Nadella’s perspective about leadership. Three years ago, Nadella succeeded Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He found out that the period of stalled growth has resulted in causing a once-dominant software company to be “sick” and its employees “disheartened.” The once PC-centric now lagged behind others. Nadella throw opens the story of his personal life and his work as a change-making leader, and he explains the need for machine intelligence.

Nadella happens to be a modest, likable individual that evolve from an accomplished family; his parent nurtured him and taught him the importance of balance and value of intellect. He arrived in the United States just before the 1900s tech boom, earned his computer science degree from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Master’s degree at the University of Chicago. In 1992, he joined Microsoft. He writes with openness about his challenges as CEO; “hierarchy and pecking order” reigned at the fiefdom-ridden company, stifling spontaneity and creativity. His feedback has been listening with affinity to the employee concerns, to help build and create a new culture that strengthens the staffs to act on their passion and make a substantial difference in a mobile-first cloud- first world where billions of people will be connected to the internet of things. In order to achieve this new culture, the company must adopt growth mindset by being customer obsessed, diverse and inclusive and act as one Microsoft.

Another terrific chapter of this book is about “friends or frienemies.” Nadella forges a surprising new partnership with his fiercest rivals. He left the audience spellbound when he removes an iPhone from his pocket. The phone has Microsoft software and applications on it. He perceived that being able to collaborate and compete with the giants in the marketplace means walking the tightrope. He was able to work successfully with old rivals. In this book, he acknowledges the strength of his competitors and the need to find a smart way to partner with companies that have a strong market position with their service and device.  

Also in this book, the author speaks with integrity about his biggest fumble at Grace Hopper when he addresses the audience at the celebration of women in computing. He told them that they should not ask for raises but instead trust that hard work and long-term efficiency of the system would reward them.

What makes Hit Refresh extremely fascinating is Nadella’s capacity to acknowledge his mistakes, laugh at it and to invite Microsoft employees to look at the video and learn from it.  That is a practical leadership lesson most leaders should not hesitate to adopt.

Hit Refresh includes descriptions of experimental retreats, “hacks” meant to fire passions, leadership principles and other tips. This book is a hit. But beyond that, it is a refreshing read.

The Big Three – Key Points

Key Point #1:

Culture and Leadership and it advice to have the mindset of growth.

Key Point #2:

Acknowledge the strength of your competitors and the need to find a smart way to partner with companies that have a strong market position with their service and device.  

Key Point #3:

Be able to work successfully with old rivals. Being able to collaborate and compete with the giants in the marketplace means walking the tightrope.

One Last Thing 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
― Satya Nadella

Innovators

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Walter Isaacson, a biography writer, reveals the story of the people who created the computer and internet. It is a standard history of digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation was birthed. He describes the talents that allowed confident entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into a disruptive leap, why some succeeded and why some fail.

The book started with a genius named Ada Bryon, the daughter of Lord Bryon. She was tutored in math which she further nurtured herself in adulthood and also studied art. She had a burning passion for one and felt the other helped discipline herself. She soon met Charles Babbage, a science and math whiz who invented the difference engine, the giant calculating machine. Soon, Ada started using her sense of art and mathematical ability to expand upon an improved version of the difference engine, the analytical engine. This machine would be able to process different problems and even switch between what to solve on its own. When translating a transcript of Babbage’s description, Ada added her own notes which envisioned the modern computer. Mostly, she described computer as we know them, Versatile general-purpose machine. Sadly, Babbage’s machine was never invented, and he died in poverty. Ada got married to William King who later became the Earl of Lovelace which led to her being known as Ada Lovelace.

Another group of genius’ was Eckert and Mauchly who served as counterbalances for each other making them typical of many digital-arts leadership duos. Eckert drove people with a passion for precision while Mauchly tended to calm them and make them feel loved. Eckert conceded that neither could have done it alone. In 1946, they both formed their commercial business that created the next big computer maned UNIVAC, which became a celebrity on election night in 1952 by predicting the winner early. With Grace Hopper, the first workable compiler came into existence. She allowed ordinary folks to write programs in something that looks like English. She started the open-source approach by sending her workout for others to improve and lead the creation of COBOL, the first cross-platform language for computers.

The next prominent actor on our stage wasn’t a single player but a team assembled at AT&T Bell Labs. By bringing theorists and engineers who had vision and passion, they set the stage for the development of the solid state device known as the transistor. The three players who earned the Nobel prize for this discovery were William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen Brattain. Bardeen produced the first crude transistor in 1947 and Shockley produced an improvised version soon after. It wasn’t long before transistors were replacing the vacuum tubes in radios and finding their way into computers.

Other recognized players in this book include John Von Neumann, a Hungarian-born mathematician. He contributed expressly to figuring out how to store a program in computer memory. He also figured out how to make a computer modify its program based on the results it was getting. Robert Noyce led a team that made a better and more efficient microchip. The idea of a microchip was to place multiple devices like transistors on the same piece of silicon and was brought into existence by two major companies. Jack Kilby led the first team. Kilby’s product featured gold wires connecting the device while Noyce’s chip laid down a grid of copper on the chip to connect the chips. The race was to make microchips smaller, faster, cheaper and more powerful. Ultimately, both companies worked it out so they could benefit. Kilby finally received the Nobel prize in 2000 while Noyce died in 1990. Tim Berners Lee created the necessary tools needed to bring his vision to life. His vision was to create a single global web of information which led him to use hypertext to connect one document on one computer to another elsewhere on the internet.

The final story in this book involves two graduate students from Stanford who were both rejected by MIT. While Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Google search engine wasn’t the first of its kind, it did become most famous.

This book is full of people who stood at the time of intersection of the arts and science and made their contributions.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1: Innovation is rarely one single individual’s effort as it’s based on collaboration integration and incremental improvement

Key point #2:  These innovators were willing to share their ideas, thoughts and work with people that make them significant

Key point #3: Progress doesn’t happen overnight or behind closed doors. It’s only when people come together to share, collaborate, create and negate that ideas will amount to something that can change the world.