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Keynote Speakers

07 Nov

Posted at 19:21h in Timothy Chou

I was invited to speak at a Generation Investment Management event in San Francisco recently. In particular, I was asked to talk about the organizational and leadership challenges in realizing the commercial and sustainability benefits of data science, analytics and artificial intelligence. What follows is a summary of my comments.

Most people have heard that “data is the new oil,” or, according to a T-shirt I saw recently, the new bacon. And we all know there is going to be more and more data. In a discussion with the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Research & Development last week, he talked about how modern automobiles are capable of generating terabytes per day. He thinks it will be cars that speed the deployment of 5G networks, not YouTube.

But if data is the new oil, it’s still just crude oil, and needs refining. Analytics and data science have changed financial services (read The Quants), retail (check out Amazon) and media (log into Facebook, Twitter or Netflix). All of these industries have invested in building analytic applications, but perhaps the best example is Google Search, an analytic application delivered as a cloud service for all consumers. If you look under the hood, there are amazing software and hardware technologies that refine the crude data and deliver useful information in a simple-to-use application.

So while financial services, retail and media have been transformed by data, the rest of the global economy has been unaffected. The World Economic Forum says that two-thirds of the global GDP is power, transportation, agriculture, construction, healthcare, oil, textiles, shrimp farming, food, beverage, chemicals, mines, and water — the planet’s fundamental infrastructure. Data might be the new oil, but it’s had minimal impact on these industries and on the planet.

There are at least three challenges to address.

1. Analytic Application Cloud Services. We need more analytic application cloud services, not more platform technology. Today, building an analytic application requires at least 16 categories of platform technology and over 100 product choices. And while that’s daunting enough, you’ll also need to hire at least four different types of expertise and organize them to build an application for a business worker. While plenty of platforms and cloud services exist to build workflow applications, why would you do that when you can purchase a CRM application cloud service? The industry needs to build analytic application cloud services as it has so successfully done with workflow applications.

2. Leadership. A few years ago, I was asked to speak to the senior executives of General Electric. It was a dinnertime talk so I thought I should come up with a simple topic. I decided to name the talk: “Why is Software Not Hardware?” I started by saying that I don’t know much about building MRI scanners, wind turbines or jet engines, but I do know it’s not the same as building software. The executive leadership and boards of power, agriculture, construction, healthcare, oil, textiles, shrimp farming, food, beverage, chemicals, mines, and water companies need to understand software and realize that it’s not something they hand to the CIO.

3. Policy. I teach a class on cloud computing at Stanford University; it’s listed in the computer science department, but I use it to invite the rest of the campus to learn about technology. I was particularly pleased to see a number of students from the law school over the past several years. Why? Because today, laws and public policy are being set by people who have no clue about technology. Just watch the Facebook hearing and the questions asked of Mark Zuckerberg. If data science, analytics and artificial intelligence transform the planet, we’re also going to need thoughtful and well-advised public policy across the globe.

If data truly is the new oil, it’s going to take technology, leadership and wise public policy to refine it.

22 Oct

Posted at 18:50h in Uncategorized
After helping create and test over 25,000 innovations with a commercialization valuation of $17 Billion I’ve learned the following 5 things are critical to innovation success:

1. Alignment on what is an INNOVATION is the Start: Successful innovation begins with alignment on a precise and measurable definition of WHAT is an innovation.  We define an idea as an innovation if it is “Meaningfully Unique.”  We measure it by asking customers how likely they are to purchase (meaningfulness) and how new and different (unique) they perceive the idea to be. With Meaningful Uniqueness as the definition innovation is no longer a debate. Rather, it’s grounded in factual evidence. And it works. Ideas with greater Meaningful Uniqueness create word of mouth, awareness, distribution trial purchase/usage, and repeat purchase/usage.

2. Failure is Fundamental:  Meaningfully Unique innovations have never been done before. To make them real you need to test, try, and experiment. You must embrace failure as just the normal process required to turn big ideas into reality. Rapid cycles of experimentation are run because we don’t know the answer before we begin. Importantly, these cycles of learning are not random. Rather, they are disciplined cycles of what is known as the Deming cycle – Plan, Do, Study, Act. Importantly – “study” is used in place of “check” in the cycles.
3. No Math No Innovation: Doing the math on sales, savings, profits, costs, etc. turns your idea into a business opportunity. Doing the math helps you make sure that your idea has the potential to make a meaningful difference in the world. When you do the math using the new risk adjusted methods you quickly quantify the areas of greater risk due to uncertainty in your understanding.

4. No Patent No Innovation: The highest standard of Meaningful Uniqueness is an innovation that is patentable. Ideas that are patentable generate pride and passion.  Ideas that are patentable are by definition, non obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the area. Conversely, ideas that are not patentable are obvious. Sadly, existing patent writing, searching, and management systems are not aligned to the newest of laws and best practices. In fact, when we give business leaders our Patent Literacy test they score 60% correct.  Note it’s a true / false test thus 50% correct would be random guessing.

5. You Gotta LOVE It: If you don’t love and I mean really love your innovation then you’re not going to invest the energy required to make it happen.  Innovation equals change and working through change requires massive investment of energy.  The only way you can sustain the energy required to commercialize a meaningfully unique idea is if you really love it.

04 Oct

Posted at 19:41h in Doug Hall
The classic method of segregating innovation to a single department, or to a process led by specialists, just isn’t fast enough any longer. What’s needed is a culture in which innovation is the mission of everyone, everywhere, every day. What’s not understood is how to do it.

Most innovation methods don’t actually result in innovative solutions. Research shows that just 5 to 15 percent of innovations are successful at large companies. Most business leaders would have greater odds of success if they went to a Las Vegas casino and gambled their innovation investment on one big bet. But companies pursuing innovation as their core business strategy realize 50 to 100 percent higher profit margins than those who pursue low cost, high quality and fast delivery strategies, or simply doing whatever the customer says. 

Yet now, with Innovation Engineering — a data-driven, reliable system for creating fresh ideas and successfully turning them into reality — companies can transform innovation from a random act to a reliable science. Innovation Engineering is validated in real-world practice, and has been the launch pad for more than $16 billion in growth and system improvement projects. 

Every existing innovation program preaches the importance of embracing a childlike, creative spirit. This works for the 15 percent of the work population who have a right brain creative thinking style. But it doesn’t work for the 85 percent with a logical left-brain thinking style. And without the 85 percent who are logical, there’s virtually no chance a meaningfully unique innovation will become reality. Left brainers are critical to accomplishing the engineering, finance, production and operational work that’s required to make meaningful change happen. 

Innovation Engineering methods and tools are designed to engage both left and right brain thinkers. Projects are focused with clear, motivating strategic missions that speak to both project vision and boundaries. The result is an unleashing of a culture of “whole brain” thinking. 

The following are some of the essential practices of Innovation Engineering: 

1. Create systems that enable instead of control.

The word “system,” especially in connection with innovation, creates a vision of being controlled, constrained and restricted. That’s not the purpose of Innovation Engineering. It’s a system designed to enable innovation by everyone. Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a renowned systems specialist, observed: “Ninety-four percent of problems are caused by the system — 6 percent by the workers.” In fact, 99 percent of companies have no system for innovation. Often, leaders don’t believe the people in their organization can innovate, or they blame their people for a lack of innovation. In fact, the problem lies in their lack of an embedded innovation system. A new mindset is needed to embrace the discovery of ideas, methods and tools for working smarter.

2. Generate a multitude of ideas to end up a big idea.

Invite teams of workers to free-associate around a problem or challenge. The more ideas you create, the more big ideas you end up with. For example, a business selling Christmas trees, who needed to find a profitable way to dispose of leftover trees, generated a multitude of ideas, such as pine needle tea and pine oil extract. The notion of creating great ideas by first creating lots of unrealistic ones is a viable approach to innovation.

3. Discover and develop “meaningfully unique” innovation.

Innovation Engineering’s definition of innovation is concise: meaningful, in that it has an obvious value to the customer — that is, customers would willingly give up their existing behaviors for it; and unique, in that it’s genuinely original. Often it offers a quantifiable advantage that you can put a number on that shows how much better it is versus the existing alternative.  

4. Analyze potential “death threats.”

Key issues that could keep an idea from succeeding, in Innovation Engineering termed death threats, must be resolved through disciplined systems of discovery, instead of the old “declare and defend” approach. The term denotes the emotional intensity that matches a fear of unknowns inherent in innovation. It enables honest conversations about critical issues without igniting defensiveness. Instead of saying, “Your idea can’t work,” others are taught to say, “There could be a death threat with this idea.” Defining a challenge (such as a regulatory barrier) as a hypothetical concern moves it to the less confrontational third person. Death threats are examined by creating “What if?” hypotheses and experiments. 

5. Add define and discover phases before the classic develop and deliver phases.

To enable speed and success with innovation projects, include disciplined front-end phases to get clarity on the entire idea before entering the “develop” stage. Innovation Engineering designers have found that adding these phases increases development success by up to 250 percent. Two big decision points occur before develop and deliver where bulk of the investment (60% and 30%) is made. The define stage involves laying out the entire idea, as opposed to a sequential system of hand-offs from marking to R&D to production and sales. The discover stage involves problem-solving to reduce uncertainty and address the project’s death threats. 

6. Know that patent owners reap the rewards.

Patent filings in the U.S. have grown exponentially. While ideas alone aren’t patentable, the methods or the proofs of innovative ideas are. The importance of technology ownership is significant. The U.S. Patent Office found that, on average, wages are 70 percent higher for those employees who work in intellectual property intensive industries versus non-intellectual property intensive industries. Filing of provisional patents now take hours, not weeks, and doing so is a no-brainer.

02 Oct

Posted at 21:03h in Timothy Chou

Over the past few years I’ve been on a steep learning curve regarding the construction industry, having started out knowing nothing. Four years ago, Helge Jacobsen, VP at United Rentals—the world’s largest construction machine rental company—invited me to be a part of an all-day strategy session. I was the only non-United Rentals person there. In the first hour I kept hearing people say, 19-foot scissor this and 19-foot scissor that. But as I couldn’t imagine a 19-foot pair of scissors, I finally raised my hand and asked, “Why would anyone want to rent a 19-inch scissor?” They all laughed and told me they were talking about a 19-foot scissor lift. Later that year, the United Rentals folks sent me a present—an actual 19-inch scissor (pictured above).

As a student of the construction industry, I’ve learned it’s one of the few industries where productivity has not been improving. According to an analysis by McKinsey, no industry has done worse. Since 1995, the manufacturing industry has nearly doubled productivity, while construction has remained flat.

So what can be done about this?

For starters, we’ve seen the increases in productivity resulting from the power of connecting people on the Internet. So, in construction we need to start with connecting the construction machines. Once the machines are connected we can start to collect the data. Of course, many already know that data is the “new oil,” or, as I saw on a t-shirt last week, the “new bacon.” But, construction machine companies, construction rental companies, and the companies that build bridges or offshore oil drilling rigs will need to find a way to share their crude isolated IT and OT digital data so they can use AI/ML technologies to turn it into refined information. Information that could optimize their decisions today and ultimately predict the future.

Next, electrification and autonomous operation are already beginning to reshape the transportation industry. It’s clear that the environmental benefits of electrification and the cost and safety benefits of autonomous operation will make a big difference in construction projects; this autonomous excavator is a great example.

In the manufacturing industry, repetition and automation have been the principles, which have increased productivity, so many in the industry are starting to think about how these principles might also change the construction industry. Architects and general contractors may re-think how buildings are constructed, and along with that, what tools and machines will be required when the units of construction become much larger.

Improving productivity isn’t the only priority for the construction industry; another is construction site safety. For instance, out on the job site we now have the ability to ensure that only someone certified with the proper training can start a machine, like one of those 19-foot scissor lifts. Likewise, we can monitor the site environment around a number of parameters, such as temperature, humidity, water leakage, atmospheric pressure, noise, vibration and air particulates. And the implications of augmented reality and hands-free, voice-enabled technology to enhance safety are just beginning to be explored. It’s clear a connected job site of the future will not look like it does today.

And finally, the commercial buildings, hospitals or solar farms we build will all be much smarter. We’ll use sensors to ensure the quality of the air and water and everyone will operate much more precisely in how they consume power. In addition, everything from LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants to office buildings will protect us from unintentional threats like fires, as well as the intentional threats we all face in the modern world.

We have a long road of innovation ahead of us.

I just returned from United Rentals’ 19th Total Control conference in Dallas where we did the unofficial launch of the new book, Precision Construction, the sequel to Precision: Principles, Practices and Solutions for the Internet of Things. If you’re interested in construction, this new book gives anyone who makes, rents or uses construction machines a glimpse of this new, software-defined world, utilizing the knowledge and experience of over 20 co-storytellers from the construction industry. Precision Construction will be available next month on Amazon as both a traditional book and on Kindle. You can also register hereto get the Kindle eBook version free for a limited time. Use coupon code: TCL.

28 Aug

Posted at 19:05h in Timothy Chou

Last week I did a dinnertime talk in Houston for my friends at Atomiton. We had executives from quite a few companies including Halliburton, McDermott, Southwest Energy, Bechtel, Schlumberger and Chevron. While this is not a transcript of the talk – hopefully this is what they heard. 

Enterprises who build or use construction, healthcare, oil, gas, energy, agriculture, water, textile, or industrial printing machines are starting to think about their edge computing strategy. As a CIO or CDO, what should you be thinking about? What should your edge strategy be?

Let me start with an observation that up until now, most of the software and hardware technology we’ve built has been for the Internet of People (IoP).  Whether that’s an eCommerce site or a CRM application, we fundamentally believe there is a person at the other end typing on a keyboard or scrolling thru their phone.

But, as I explain to my Stanford kids, People are not Things, and Things are not People. Why do I say that?

There will be way more things connected to the Internet than People. John Chambers is widely quoted, as saying there will be 500B things connected to the Internet. That’s nearly 10x the global population.

Things can be where people are not. Things can be in your stomach as a smart pill. Things can be a mile underground in a coal mine and Things can be in the middle of the Australian Outback. Things can be where people are not.

Things have more to say than People. The best we can do is type, move a mouse or scroll down a screen. Modern day wind turbines have 500 sensors on them. Things have much more to say.

Things can say something much more frequently. The best we can do is press on our touch screen or type on our laptops. A long wall shearer in the coal mining industry has roof top vibration sensors that run at 10,000 samples per second. That’s a lot faster than any of us can type.

And finally , we can debate this. Things can be programmed. People can’t.

So if Things are not People, then why would technology built for the Internet of People work for the Internet of Things?

The smart phone is the edge for the Internet of People. One of the reasons sensor technology has plummeted in price has been the rise of smart phones. Modern cell phones contain up to fourteen sensors including accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers and thermometers. Some phones have a built-in barometer, which measures atmospheric pressure. It’s used to determine how high the phone is above sea level, which improves GPS accuracy. Samsung Galaxy pioneered the use of an air humidity sensor in their phones. That data is used to tell whether the user is in their comfort zone. Some phones, such as the Galaxy X5 have heart rate monitors. Finally, you might not be surprised to know a Sharp smart phone sold in Japan contains a radiation sensor. These sensors interface to a big computer with lots of storage and connect out to three different kinds of networks. This hardware is all driven by innovative software from Apple and Google, which built software development environments that have given us millions of apps.

So what’s the edge of the Internet of Things going to be? As someone who is responsible for your enterprise edge computing strategy I’d recommend you consider five major components.

Compute & Storage. It’s no real news, but you can now get high-powered computers with 1.4Ghz CPU, 1GB memory and 128GB of storage for less than $75. By the way, that’s the spec of the iPhone6. The days of PLCs and 8-bit microcontrollers are long past us. What are your edge compute & storage requirements? How much power is required? Do you need to run on batteries? Disposable? Rechargeable?

Communications. Your edge strategy should include a much wider range of connectivity options than just Wi-Fi and 4G.  In addition to Wi-Fi and 4G you may consider LoRa, SigFOX, NBIoT, Zigbee, 5G Cellular and even 60GHz wireless. How much data do you need to transmit, how frequently? How much power can you consume? And how far is your edge from the cloud? Remember Things can be where people are not.

Sensors. While your smart phone has a handful of sensors, the range of possible sensors is far greater. TE Connectivity’s catalog has 1632 different kinds of sensors. Sensors can have many different quality levels. Just consider the light sensor in the camera on your phone. Did you know you can purchase an 8 megapixel camera with a sensor that is 1/4 the size of another 8 megapixel camera? Obviously a larger image sensor has more surface area exposed to the available light, which will result in a better quality image. What will your sensor strategy be? How many sensors? Quality of the sensors?

Software. Windows, Android and IoS were all developed for the Internet of People. Remember Visual Basic was built to make it easy to interact with people so much of the focus has been on building better and more responsive people interfaces. But Things are not People. What software stack will you use? Will it enable you to interface with a wide variety of sensors and communication technologies? Does it provide a robust application developer environment?

Software Management. Just as the edge of the Internet of People, the edge of the Internet of Things will increasingly be driven by software. Consider that in 2016 the Porsche Panamera had just 2,000,000 lines of code. The 2017 Porsche has 100,000,000 lines of code. As you’ve already seen on your smart phone, software needs to be updated to improve performance, battery life and security. So what will your strategy be for the management of the availability, security and performance of your edge software? How will you implement identity and access management for your Things? It’s not likely that you can make them change the password every 90 days and add a special character.

So as an IT professional there is much to learn, but as we have seen the edge for the Internet of People (your phone) has transformed the consumer experience. The edge for the Internet of Things promises to transform enterprises including oil, gas, water, industrial printing, transportation, construction, healthcare, agriculture, textiles and energy. So get started on your edge strategy.

Timothy Chou has been lucky enough to have a career spanning academia, successful (and not so successful) startups and large corporations. He was one of only six people to ever hold the President title at Oracle.

27 Jun

Posted at 00:15h in Featured, Speakers, Thought Leaders

The day began as every other, but as soon as I arrived at work, I received an email: “Happy One Year Anniversary!” I love working at Amazon Web Services because I am on a continuous learning path. I run the group that helps to migrate Enterprise workloads onto the AWS Cloud. I have the opportunity to work with some of our largest customers and partners like VMware, Microsoft, and SAP.

Learning is a core part of my role at AWS, but it is also about sharing those lessons. To celebrate my one-year anniversary, I want to share some of the things I’ve learned at AWS.

6 Lessons I’ve learned in the past year:

1.    Customers first. This lesson is still the most important in my journey at AWS. Customers are always first. I love the story of Low Flying Hawk. At AWS, we genuinely read the forums and listen to customers. A person with the alias of Low Flying Hawk was constantly suggesting new features in one such forum, and the team came to look forward to that feedback so much that they would ask in meetings “What would Low Flying Hawk say?” Low Flying Hawk didn’t spend a huge sum with AWS, but this person’s input was so valued that we recently named an Amazon building Low Flying Hawk to honor the importance of what those comments and requests represent to AWS. It is real and lived hourly. Great products and services come from deeply understanding your customer. If we jump straight to a solution without spending time thinking about customer needs, we limit our options for inventing a delightful experience for customers.

2.    Learn from others. At AWS, we don’t present PowerPoints but we read six-page written narratives. To learn more about this, Jeff actually discusses it in the Amazon Shareholder Letter here. It was a bit hard to get used to at first, sitting quietly and reading, but now I get the importance of this process. Once we are done reading, anyone and everyone can ask a question or make a comment. It is a conversation starter to achieve clarity and customer focus. We read, discuss, and debate. We revise and make the idea better with each iteration. We push ourselves to invent on behalf of the customer. It is a pure learning experience that makes the ideas better and stronger. For example, our team had dreamed big on a new approach, but through our narrative process we found out that the technical approach just wasn’t going to work. And that’s what you have to do. Dream big but iterate and go deep, get the data, and figure out if the idea really has legs

3.    It’s usually the second, or third idea. One of my customers, Bridget Frey from Redfin, shared with me an illustration and story from one of her favorite graphic novelists, Kazu Kibuishi. His drawings are haunting, beautiful and complex. But they don’t start out that way. In his creative process, he forces himself to use the least expensive notebook paper for his initial drawings, to remind himself that his early drafts are disposable. It’s a reminder that innovators can fall into this trap, where we’re too precious in our designs. We refine a single approach, rather than starting anew with different ideas on different sheets of paper. Innovation doesn’t usually feel like one inspiring idea after another. But as you experiment you test new theories. You fall in love with an idea, you give it everything. And then you realize you were wrong, and you have to be ready to pick yourself up and fall in love with the next idea.

4.    It’s ok to fail! My team had a tough problem to solve and at first, we took a pure tech approach. We tried to completely automate a migration task, thinking technology was all people would need to get the job done. We thought we were being innovative – but we were building something that our customers couldn’t leverage until the culture inside their organizations was addressed. So, we started offering Digital Innovation workshops. A big part of innovation is just getting really good at learning from the ideas that don’t work, so you have space for the ones that will.

5.    AWS democratizes technology! I knew that the AWS Cloud was very powerful but I had no idea how much it was impacting customers. Recently at the San Francisco Summit, I heard the story of how it is powering the leaderboard of Peloton, helping Cerner in healthcare, and even making it easier to use machine learning with Adobe. Things that AWS has created like Amazon SageMaker are just too cool! Amazon SageMaker removes all the barriers that typically slow down developers who want to use machine learning. Machine learning often feels a lot harder than it should to most developers because the process to build and train models, and then deploy them into production, is too complicated and too slow. Or consider the new launch templates developed from 100s of customers wanting to make it easier. Launch templates for Amazon EC2 have made it flexible and easy for our developers. With launch templates you can apply access controls, ensure tagging policies, and even make sure that developers in the organization are only launching the most recent, patched version of your AMIs.

6.    Make history. The Amazon mantra is work hard, have fun, and make history. I am motivated to help our customers make history. I’ve learned a lot as I have gained more experience working with a great team on great projects. For example, working on the partnership with VMware to reduce the cost of hybrid cloud while offering unparalleled access to the cloud will be one of those partnerships of a lifetime.

Sandy Carter is VP of Amazon web services and Forbe’s 2016 Digital Influencer & CNN’s Top 10 Most Powerful Women in Tech; recipient of more than 25 social media awards for innovative and successful implementation of Social Business techniques.  Invite Sandy to your next event!

15 May

Posted at 03:25h in Mark Mayfield

I’m drawn to buzzwords?  Particularly business buzzwords?  They sometimes “muddy the water”, but “at the end of the day” these metaphors can help us  “get all our ducks in a row”.  You might disagree, so let’s talk about this  “elephant in the room”.

Words can be fleeting, but buzzwords are here to stay.  Particularly one that has been dominating the business scene the last few years:  disruptive innovation.

IS THIS NEW?

Its genesis came in 1995 from a college professor at Harvard.  And I find that ironic. Tying the word “disruption” with “education” seems incongruous…and also like a description of my time in school.  Who knew that being disruptive would eventually be a good thing? I just wish people had thought that years ago. Sex education being taught in my high school biology class had me and my buddy Ron Clark making some very crude, but very creative, comments.  I was just being disruptive. Little did I know I was way ahead of my time.

Disruptive Innovation is exactly what it implies.  It CREATES new markets by CHANGING things.  It fills a void or replaces something.  Personal computers would be the biggest example for most of us.  Prior to that, the normal individual couldn’t afford a computer. They were a large mainframe device that only big companies or universities owned.  Years ago I remember touring the offices of donors to a youth organization I represented. Every one of those tours included a stop in their “computer room” where they bragged about how many miles of magnetic tape was contained there.  We were always told the tape could reach from Los Angeles to (insert your landmark). I’m pretty sure they made that up. How would we know anyway? And who measured those tapes? That seemed like a poor use of personnel. And you thought your job was boring.  The magnetic tape market was a victim of disruptive innovation. This type of disruption is responsible for all sorts of things like iPads, Netflix, and 3D Printing, just to name a few. Those are markets that didn’t exist before.

DISRUPTION vs SUSTAINING

Disruptive innovation is different than sustaining innovation.  Sustaining innovation is the type of innovation that is an improvement to an existing item or service.  In simple terms, it’s making something better. Compare your first cell phone to the one you have now. Today’s mobile phone is obviously better than the one from ten years ago.  Of course, this example doesn’t work if you’re still using your original phone. If your cell phone is rotary, I’m talking about you.

The odd thing is sometimes these two types of innovation can hinder one another.  An existing business can be so consumed with making something better and keeping customers loyal they forget new markets are emerging.  They fail to disrupt the marketplace by filling those new opportunities and needs. Then the new disruptive innovator overtakes them and in many cases the sustaining innovator goes belly-up.  Or vice-versa. A company is so bent on finding the next “new thing”, they forget to keep improving on their existing business.

In many circles there is a huge debate over the theory behind these types of innovations, and a resulting argument over whether a company like Uber is disruptive or sustaining.  Here’s the point of this blog. Who cares?! Why does it matter which category you’re in. It’s semantics. That’s like having an argument with your spouse and saying, “I didn’t say I was mad, I said I was angry”.  It doesn’t matter. Other than historical documentation, it doesn’t matter whether your innovation is disruptive or sustaining.

Here’s what does matter.  You have to do both. You have to be better at what you do (sustaining), and you have to be willing to do totally new things (disruptive).

That’s one of the reasons I wrote my latest book “MORPH”.  This is the part of the blog that is shameless self-promotion.  The book is available on my website or on Amazon. It’s a manual for change.  If you’re going to survive AND thrive during change, you’ve got to innovate both ways.  It’s the key to managing change. To be honest, some change is easy.  If a long-lost relative left you a few million dollars you’d probably be okay with that change.  (By the way, a Nigerian Prince has given me ten million dollars so I know the feeling.) But a lot of change is hard and my contention is the best way to deal with change is to create change.  Sounds like an oxymoron, I know. But look at those companies that were innovating in a disruptive or a sustaining fashion. They had no problem dealing with change. They won.

This is why in my estimation, creativity is the most important component of success.  I know this will irritate some of my colleagues in the motivational speaking world because they believe it’s all about attitude.  That may be step number one in the problem-solving process, but it’s only the beginning. Many people honestly believe ALL you have to do is have a good attitude.  

Some speakers even preach this.  “If you believe it you can achieve it.”  Horse hockey. Here’s my point: attitude is step number one but it’s not the only step.  If all you have is a good attitude you’ll be the happiest loser on the block. Things will suck for you but you’ll smile and keep charging ahead into one disaster after another.  For example, growing up I rode horses nearly every day. I had a dream of winning the Kentucky Derby. I could have been an excellent jockey. I was 4’11” and weighed 96 pounds as a sophomore in high school.  I’ve got an old driver’s license to prove it. In college my body discovered hormones. I’m 6 foot and weigh 190 pounds now. Despite all my positive attitude and belief in myself, I’ll never be a world-class jockey.  Not unless we start racing Clydesdales. Attitude is the first thing you have to do, but it’s worthless without the ability to innovate.

WHAT TO DO?

You want to be more creative?  You want to innovate? Here’s a few ideas to incorporate into your life.  Pick one or a few or all of them if you want to innovate.

  1.  Brainstorm.  This is a great idea tool.  The key is to not evaluate ideas while you’re generating them.  Negative thoughts and comments, and even positive evaluation can stifle the idea generation process.  
  1.  Join up.  Don’t let your brain shut down.  Human interaction stimulates your creativity, so get involved with people.  The mind loves company.
  1.  Adopt a questioning attitude.  Ask the question “Why?”.  When we question what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, it forces us to evaluate.  And that improves the odds of finding more creative options.
  1.  Go into action.  With few exceptions, couch potatoes are not creative geniuses.  My experience is that creative people are active people. This doesn’t mean you have to be a gym rat, but there is a connection between mental activity and physical activity.  
  1.  Practice Comparison.  Compare what you do with what other successful and happy people do.  What positive activities and practices do they employ that you might incorporate into your lifestyle?  This is a great exercise for business as well. Sometimes when doing this, businesses make a mistake…they only look inside their industry.  People and companies can often incorporate an idea from a very unlikely source. Look outside your normal circles for ideas.
  1.  Play games.  The phrase “use it or lose it” definitely applies to the mind.  There are an unlimited number of mental games you can buy, or you can just stick with something like the crossword puzzle or Sudoku.  I’m personally a fan of the Rubik’s Cube. It forces you to deduce several steps of a problem. And it’s also a petroleum based product and burns nicely in the fireplace.  HA! Games stimulate the brain.
  1.  Hang out with creative people.  There’s definitely an osmosis effect when you’re with bright and inventive people.  The same is true when you’re with dull and boring folks. I remember a management tip I got from one of my first bosses, “If you can’t change the people around you, then change the people around you.”  He was simply saying spend less time with negative and unimaginative people.  Although this might be tough, they could be family. Ughhh.
  1.  Be a kid.  Have a little fun.  One of my favorite sayings is, “You don’t stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing”.  Kids haven’t had years of rules and restrictions to stifle their creativity. As we age we start self-imposing rules that often don’t exist.  This is why I try and spend as much time with my grandkids as I can. They’re good for me. They see things I don’t see. They keep me young. These are just some of the questions I’ve got from young ones lately:  

                Papa you’re old, are you a pilgrim?

                Was Humpty Dumpty’s mom a great big chicken?

                Papa, why is your hair running out of ink?  

                When you say weed the garden, don’t you mean “un-weed”?

  1.  Use your sense of humor.  I believe there is a definite connection between your sense of creativity and your sense of humor.  I’m not saying one causes the other, I’m saying they enhance one another. The funniest people I know are also incredibly creative.  That’s because to create comedy you have to find a creative twist that most people don’t immediately see. So funny things are creative things, and often the other way around.  

To deal with change you need both disruptive innovation AND sustaining innovation.  I know they’re buzzwords, but they carry heavy weight today.  You may hate buzzwords, but if you’re gonna “hit a homerun” and “build a better mousetrap”, then you’ve got to “get your arms around” both disruptive and sustaining innovation.  It’ll be a “win-win proposition” for you and your people, and will really “hit the nail on the head”. “I’m just sayin”

Mark Mayfield

Hall of Fame Speaker

Solid Business Wisdom in a Brilliant Comedic Style

Mark Mayfield has been a professional speaker, comedian, and author since the 1970’s.  

Raised on a farm in Caney, Kansas he has been a livestock producer, teacher, nightclub performer, lobbyist, golf instruction facility owner, and is now the world’s greatest grandpa.  

He is equally adept at performing comedy shows or high-content keynotes and seminars.  

A meeting planner recently called him “one of the very few, really inspiring, yet hilarious men in America today”.  His mom also said that once after a small bribe.

30 Apr

Posted at 22:09h in Featured, Speakers

I’ve taught at Stanford University for more than twenty-five years and it’s a privilege to “warp young minds.” You may not realize it, but not everyone wants to build a better smart phone app, a new way to talk to his or her friends, or another way to buy something. Many students want to do something meaningful—something that might change the real world. But, what might that be?

Let’s start by realizing the global economy is driven by developing economies. Developing economies are driven by population growth, which is why Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa are interesting. Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Nigeria is projected to become the third most populous country in the world before 2050. Vietnam will soon have a population of 100 million with an average age being just 30 years old.

So what do developing economies need? They need infrastructure: power, water, agriculture, transportation, construction, healthcare and telecommunications. But will these be delivered the #firstworld way? Would you put up landlines for telecommunications in Rwanda? Of course not; instead you’d skip the old technologies and go straight to implementing a 4G cellular network.

What about electricity? Would you build giant, centralized, coal-fired plants and hierarchical power distribution networks? No, you’d build a distributed grid of solar, wind, battery storage, and hydroelectric generators all managed by software. You might even never go to AC and build a DC network on day one.

What about healthcare? There is no way for developing economies to build enough medical schools and hospitals to replicate a #firstworld healthcare system. But, maybe it’s an opportunity to re-think healthcare. Today, hospitals are buildings with expensive machines sitting next to the people that use the machines. In the world of computing, we used to do it the same way; people were located next to their compute and storage machines. But twenty years ago we discovered networks, and now the servers are centrally located and the people are all on the network. So why don’t we do the same thing with healthcare machines?

But this doesn’t have to just apply to developing economies. Today, there are about 500 children’s hospitals on the planet and on average there are 1,000 machines in each hospital. What if we could connect them all? The consumer Internet took off when 1,000,000 machines were connected. Maybe with 500,000 machines connected children’s healthcare could become dramatically different. Sadly, most of the attention today is on EMR/EHR applications, where doctors spend their evenings and weekends typing data into these pre-Internet applications. But the massive amounts of data, which will power AI applications is not there. The data is in the machines: the blood analyzers, gene sequencers, CAT scanners, and ultrasound machines.

These are just a few examples of the potential of software to change the planet. During the past 15 years, the Internet revolution has redefined business-to-consumer industries such as media, retail and financial services. In the next 10 years, according to the World Economic Forum, the Internet of Things will dramatically alter power, construction, agriculture, healthcare, textiles, mining, packaging, oil, gas, buildings, transportation, which together account for nearly two-thirds of the global gross domestic product.

Software has the potential to change the world—the real world. And unless we’re all moving to Mars—and I know some people are working on this—we’ll have to operate much more precisely. Next generation software can transform the planet in everything from power to healthcare, shrimp farming to textiles, and water to transportation. So if you’re a student at Stanford or any other university in the world, you can really change the world.

Timothy Chou has been lucky enough to have a career spanning academia, successful (and not so successful) startups and large corporations. He was one of only six people to ever hold the President title at Oracle.

19 Sep

Posted at 04:11h in Speakers

It has been just over 100 days since I began my new role at Amazon Web Services (AWS). I have received hundreds of LinkedIn questions, Facebook comments, and even DMs on Twitter asking what it is really like on the “inside” of one of the world’s most innovative companies. Here are 7 of the most valuable lessons I have learned so far.

1.   Create a Personalized Launch Plan for Success
Like at many organizations, new employees from all over the company attend orientation together. For me, one of the unique and impressive components was what Amazon calls, “The Launch Plan.” This document provides an individualized roadmap for your success. My plan listed people I needed to meet, things about the culture I needed to grasp, and emphasized self-service. Everyone takes this seriously and moves quickly to schedule time on their calendar. Employees are welcoming and share a love for imparting knowledge and insight. It was one of the best ways to get up to speed that I have ever experienced.  Special thanks to Matt Garman, my manager and super smart “Compute” expert, who spends time with me on complex situations that are so simple for him. His commitment to my success is impressive.

2. Prioritize Rewards and Constant Improvement
During my first week, I attended AWS’s weekly operational review. It is run by Charlie Bell, AWS’s SVP, and showcases AWS’s culture at its best. In the meeting, he recognized an engineer for some outstanding work he had done not just for his area of the business but for the fact that he ensured that he shared the work with other engineers. Imagine a room filled with 200+ engineers applauding the work!!   An award was given to this employee, and afterward, Charlie asked how we could replicate this type of leadership across the organization. This process happens every week. Praise is given, and then we dive deep into our services’ operational metrics and identify where we can improve. It is authentic and embedded into the fabric of the company.

3.  Make Customer Obsession Real
For every proposal, the executive team will ask what the customer wants and needs. Customer obsession is a business, and we leverage consumption data and outcomes as a sign of a customer’s desires and willingness to use our platform more.   We always start with a press release and a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document. For my first review, I spoke with over 40 Windows on AWS customers, did a customer survey, and listened to many partners. While I have always engaged with customers for knowledge, here it is expected. It is not a nice to have; it is a must have. This practice starts at the top with Andy Jassy, our AWS CEO, who meets regularly with customers and engineers.

4. Complex Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Matter
At Amazon, we don’t use PowerPoints! We write detailed, six-page papers, called narratives, to describe opportunities and how to address them. You must dive five levels deep. No high-level ideas gain traction without a deep analysis of solutions and options. It was harder than I thought it would be, but the end result makes execution more efficient and impactful.

5. Innovation Requires a Focus
How many times a day are you asked for your most disruptive idea to help customers? At Amazon, it’s more than I can count. Earlier this year I published a book on Extreme Innovation (ExtremeInnovationBook.com), based on research conducted with Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, which reviewed data from 5,000 startups and 50 established companies. For example, from the Carnegie Mellon study, I discovered that innovative companies use technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) inside their businesses to improve the value they deliver.

Amazon uses machine learning, artificial intelligence, and deep learning across many areas of their business such as our autonomous Prime Air delivery drones. The drones use a tremendous amount of machine learning, machine vision systems, and natural language understanding. And I love Amazon Go – a grocery store where you can just grab and go! Users simply visit the store—located in Seattle—and shop for the items they need. The technology detects what you take and charges your Amazon account after you leave the store – using massive machine learning that I had written about before I worked here! It is this rapid innovation and big thinking that enabled AWS to be successful and ultimately disrupt the traditional IT industry.

6.  Get Serious about Diversity
AWS continuously innovates on behalf of the customer. We have a keen understanding that innovation is driven by a diverse and inclusive workforce. We are always looking for ways to engage with our community and find top talent. I lead the Board for Girls in Tech, and Amazon jumped in immediately to sponsor their conference and leverage this experience to recruit great new talent. They are purposeful in the way they approach diversity.

7.  Small Decisions Have Big Impacts
This one is actually from just before I started at Amazon. I was elated when I received my job offer from AWS. The executive recruiter, Aloka Naskar, one of the best in the business, had me so jazzed that I didn’t seriously consider other opportunities. She convinced me that I was “Amazonian.” Having seen me deliver a keynote on the Top Trends in Technology, she liked that I carefully and skillfully went deep enough to showcase knowledge, but made it fun and exciting as well. I almost missed that keynote as I flew in the night before from Japan, which just goes to show you how much small decisions have big impacts on your life – but that’s a blog for another time.

Sandy Carter is VP of Amazon Web Services and was the former IBM global evangelist fostering community of innovation. The author of Extreme Innovation: 3 Superpowers for Purpose and Profit has also received top accolades such as 2016 Digital Influencers – Forbes magazine, Top 100 Influencer both for Cloud and IoT – Onalytica, Top Channel Chief – CRN Magazine, and CNN Top 10 Most Powerful Women in Tech. Invite Sandy to keynote your next event?
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