Someone = Us!

When you see a need or issue, what do you do? Most of us shake our heads and say, “Someone should take care of that.”  Well, someone = us!

Perhaps one of the reasons someone ≠ us is that the perceived risk of ‘doing’ diminishes our courage.  Perhaps innovators and entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-o-philic, they just define risk differently – not following one’s passion and purpose is a greater risk than financial or reputational security.  Perhaps this is a basis for Rebellious Optimism.

As some of you know, I’m so enthusiastic and hopeful about our future because of the people I’m serendipitously meeting, of all ages, shapes, sizes, creeds, and colors.  Let me highlight 3 companies, separated by 162 years:

NBA Math Hoops: What do you do when you’re 19, in college, and have a burning passion to help underprivileged kids learn math using their passion for sports?  You create a scalable solution! Meet Khalil Fuller.   The NBA has given him a free license agreement, Hasbro’s committed $100,000 to make the game, and Echoing Green named him as a finalist for their prestigious fellowship.   A national pilot with a majority of free/reduced-lunch students shows significant improvement in 51% of the math scores and improvement in attitudes about math – for both boys and girls.  Khalil is preparing for a 2012 Fall launch.

Lesson:  Get out, meet some Gen-Zs and Millennials.  We can all learn from their transformative innovations.

Thogus:  You’ve just spent big bucks getting ISO certification for half your revenue stream, the Big-3 Auto guys; but you’re tired of being their “bank”.  So you fire them!  Now what? 3^rd Generation Matt Hlavin decided to create a 61yr old startup. He reinvented the entire business model and the company is growing exponentially.  What was a ‘job shop’ is now a high-tech and biomedical design and engineering company with rapid prototyping/additive manufacturing up to full-scale injection molding capabilities.  Matt is using design to balance the experience of age with the freedom of youth, from their gym to the plant floor to employees themselves.

Lesson: A key to success is the 21^st Century is embracing, leveraging and balancing paradox. 

Menasha Packaging: Meet the163-year-old family-owned company who’s leadership team reinvented their business model and re-invigorated their culture 7 years ago, putting their careers on the line.  What drove this level of risk? Stewardship & Optimism. They view themselves as stewards of their customers, their employees and families, their economic and social community impact, and the family legacy.  They have Rebellious Optimism that they can and will succeed.  Menasha’s ongoing success, even in the recession, is testimony for “doing what is right”.  They are well known for bringing some of the most innovative, effective solutions to market.  They are hiring talent and growing.  And, as I post this, we are in the sunny Wisconsin woods, continually innovating the future.

Lesson: Don’t use a company and management’s age as artificial constraints for innovation.

What examples do you have of Rebellious Optimism? Please share and think about telling your story at Rebels At Work!!! 

Rebellious Optimism = Innovation

Optimism is the greatest act of rebellion.  So says my friend Carmen Medina.  If anyone doubts the veracity of that statement, evidence abounds in the form of people – of all ages, shapes and sizes – and especially by kids (e.g., anyone under 40).   To say I’m awed by what they are doing is an understatement.  They don’t take ‘no’ as an answer but a challenge; they view entrepreneurship and capitalism as an inherently social venture; they take system-level approaches to solving problems and by nature collaborate.   Their acts of rebellion are shaping a better world for all of us.

So, I’m going to regularly share “Optimism Greatest Act Rebellion Stories” with you and ask you to share your Optimism stories with the rest of us!  Let me start with an incredible young woman I met this past weekend at the Celebration of 120 years of Women at Brown.

Kona Shen graduated in 2010 with an honors thesis on the impact of foreign aid on Haiti’s environment and ways the international community could improve aid efforts.  Not your average thesis.  But moreso, Kona is not your average 24yr old - her poise, wisdom, leadership, business acumen and management skills are on par As a C.V. Starr Fellow at Brown, Kona was already drawn to Haiti and wanted to blend “social” and “entrepreneurship” to make a difference. After graduation, she founded, and runs, GOALS Haiti, a self-sustaining non-profit in Haiti that uses kids’ obsessive passion for soccer to engage youth in community work and education, improving their quality of life while teaching them leadership.  Children are taught how to create safe, clean, healthy environments and bodies for playing soccer.  The teams (adults, counselors, and kids) clean up their neighborhoods, collecting litter, trash collection, recycle, plant vegetable gardens, access mobile clinics, and build temporary shelters and public sanitation facilities.  GOALS Haiti uniquely emphasizes developing local capacity and youth leadership so its efforts are sustainable.  Currently, over 600 children are served a month in Haiti which also impacts their families, currently improving the lives of over 3500 Haitians a month.

There are many more fabulous stories of Rebellious Optimism to share.   One of my favorites is Runa, a B-Corp started by some Brown soccer players, classes of ’08.  Their story of doing well and doing good is one of the most powerful I’ve seen in blending innovative business models, techniques, processes and social impact.

So, if you’re worried about where this country is going, about our seemingly gridlocked government, relax a little.  There are amazing young people usurping government’s roles in productive, efficient and effective ways.  Perhaps Gov. 3.0 will be back in the hands of the people!  

Please contribute your own stories of Rebellious Optimism!

Just because you can make an omelet, doesn’t mean you’re a restaurateur!

Quick, tell me your organization’s business model. Can you? Can you tell me what a business model is? Oh, it’s how we make money!  Therein lies the problem.  It’s a lot more than just making money – making money is the output, not even the outcome, let alone the model.  Your organization, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, has a business model.  And finally, business model innovation is getting the recognition it deserves. 

That’s why I was thrilled when my friend and one of business model innovation’s gurus, Saul Kaplan, wrote a must read book sharing his real world experiences - The Business Model Innovation Factory.  Long before it became fashionable, Saul was leveraging the power of business models in his career.  His organization, The Business Innovation Factory (BIF), is a vehicle for sharing real life stories about business models that have transformed industries and lives.  If you want your organization to survive and thrive well into the 21^st Century, read this book.

Saul’s definition of a business model is simple and straightforward: “A business model is a story about how an organization creates, delivers and captures value.”[1] It is simple, but not easy and in today’s world very short-lived.  Business models used to last decades, now sometimes barely years.  That’s why we see so many good ideas either not make it to market or not for long.  It’s why just because you can make a great omelet doesn’t mean you can make 30 great omelets at once in your restaurant.[2]

Most organizations think of innovation in terms of creating value:  products, services and experiences.  Yet few are really good at truly understanding what the customer needs. That’s why there are many inventive organizations, but few innovative ones.  Saul quotes Theodore Levitt (Harvard Business School Professor), “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”  Clayton Christensen, an advisor to BIF, taught us that customers are hiring companies to “do a job” for them.  Saul cites Whitney Johnson’s description of what jobs social media does for her[3].   There is more to doing a job for a customer than just creating the solution – you have to actually get it to them.

Saul emphasizes a very critical, and almost always overlooked, component of business models - the HOW of delivering value.  We know the importance of a living, adaptable, actionable strategic plan.  It focuses the organization on the WHY and WHAT of value creation.  It provides everyone with a common mission and purpose.  Saul urges us to also create a shared operating model on HOW value will be delivered.  This is a very powerful way to align everyone on the activities and resources, a way to let people see and understand how they can and do contribute to actually delivering value to their customers. A shared operating model enables people to “collaborate with a shared purpose for value delivery.”[4] A shared operating model helps the organization identify the most important capabilities (not necessarily core competencies) and provides a roadmap for networking these capabilities to deliver value to customers.  I think this is one of the most important areas for an organization to focus and shows why strategy & execution need to be interwoven.  Those that take this recommendation seriously will be significantly advantaged.

So how do we do this? Saul is a man of action, so he provides actionable principles for business model innovation, also known as the BIF Genome – Connect, Inspire, Transform.  We need to iteratively experiment with business models.  For many, this is frightening.  Saul’s recommendation to build a business model innovation factory in the organization comes from the many real-world experiments he and the BIF team have run in BIF’s experience labs.

As we move further into the 21^st Century, we need to shift our thinking from just pouring money, time and people into R&D for ‘stuff’ to also putting money, time and people into R&D for business model innovation.  Saul’s book is a much-needed guide to doing just that.  Seeing a real life business model innovation factory in action can help too, so take a trip to Providence, RI.  I’d suggest you organize that around BIF-8 – so you can not only see, but also hear, learn, discuss from and with those who have and are doing it.

Thank you, Saul, for sharing your years of learning, of failures and successes, and of wisdom with us.  I hope we heed your recommendations to Connect, Inspire and Transform.

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[1] Kaplan, Saul. The Business Model Innovation Factory.  (New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, 2012),  pg. 18.

[2] (Kaplan, 2012), pg. 23.

[3] (Kaplan, 2012), pg. 20.

[4] (Kaplan, 2012), pg. 29.