Simon Sinek explains why companies stuck improving existing products miss real innovation. He contrasts Netflix and Amazon's approach, which evolved into something unimagined, with companies that plateau chasing a fixed vision. True innovation means applying new logic to solve problems, not just adding features.
Chapters
The irony about finite and infinite and innovation is that you actually are more innovative with an infinite mindset, right? Because what a fine mindset does is fix the product, improve the product. So what you get is like bigger screen, touch screen, right? Because we can't see beyond this, the thing we're trying to innovate, right? You get, basically you get features and benefits. They might be good features and benefits, but they're features and benefits, right? Whereas when you have the Internet mindset, it's like, what's our ultimate. Where are we trying to get to? Where are we going, right? You find that you'll, you'll look beyond and you'll leapfrog that. So let me, let me bring it down a few thousand feet, right?
All innovation. And first, let's define innovation. That's one of the other things I think we tell people, be more innovative. Like, well, what does innovation even mean, right? Is it features, benefits, what's the difference in innovation and invention, for example, and some people say, well, innovation is the, is the, is solving a problem. Okay, so what you're saying is people who aren't innovative, they're not trying to solve a problem. Of course they are. Right. I believe that innovation is the application of new logic to solve the problem. So the old adage, you know, the Henry Ford, you know people, Henry Ford said if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, right? Does that make them not innovative? Does that mean they weren't trying to solve the problem? Of course they were trying to solve the problem. How do I get to work quicker? Well, if I feed my horse more, jack it up with steroids, whatever it is. But, but innovation is new logic. Well, we have steam powered ships, we have factories. What have we applied that technology to how we get to work? And that's where you get the, the leapfrogs in ideas. So we also have to acknowledge that innovation has changed in our modern world because of the Internet and because of the Internet, that's computers and the Internet. So innovation used to mean hardware and hardware innovation is expensive. You know, it's expensive to build a stadium, it's expensive to, to make a new phone. Our phones are $1200. It's ridiculous, right? But software is cheap and it's iterative and they release imperfect things all the time. What I find interesting about that is that is a model for a different kind of way of thinking about innovation. So all innovation, regardless of what it is, a new website, new product, doesn't matter what exists on two levels, right? There's a performance level and there's time. Takes time to build it. And every time we try and build something new, you have to start with what I call the imagined vision. Somebody has to say, wouldn't it be cool if we had a website? And wouldn't it be cool? It did these things right? Imagined an imagined vision. And you try and build it, and usually it sort of like goes in steps. You have a little bit of progress, it plateaus. You have a little progress, it plateaus, you eventually build. The thing you said you were going to build never quite works the way you said it was going to work. And now you spend all your time and money circling, trying to make it do the thing you said it was going to do. That's not how int works in the software world. You still have your imagined vision. You have to have it. But then you say, what's the fastest, simplest thing we can do with the highest probability of success? Well, let's just build that. What's the fastest, simplest thing we can do with the highest probability of success that improves upon the thing that we built or takes us a little closer to the thing we're building. And what you end up doing is going right past the imagined vision, and you end up building the unimagined vision. So Netflix only set out to be a movie rental company. Never expected to be a studio. Amazon only wanted to be an online bookstore. That was it. They never imagined they would be the company they are today. Tesla just set out to be a. An electric car company. They never, it was never in anybody's vision document that they would power your house with Tesla batteries. And it's because they have this iterative point of view. And to the infinite mindset, their, their vision of what they're trying to build is way bigger. So the imagined visions to solve the problem, as they get closer to this thing, this thing becomes number one. So let's go back to what you're trying to do. If you're trying to foster relationships, okay, that's the mighty thing that we're trying to get towards. What's all the things that we can do to do that. And if we offer that transparency that Arthur talked about before, it provides context and you'll get great ideas from your people, but you want them to apply new logic. That's the new idea, right, people? Everybody's trying to solve a problem, but they often try and solve it with old logic. We want new logic.
At the risk of. This might be interesting.
So.
This is something I did during COVID which turned out to be hugely amazing. Covid hits my business dries up Most of our business was in person, right? I always had a vision of what I wanted to achieve. So I had the imagined vision. I wanted to have an online learning ability. We never really built it, but so I knew what I wanted to build. And so traditionally I would go to the company and say, I want to build this and these are the steps we're going to take and this is what I want done. And we all build, right? That's not what we did. I went to the team, I said, I want 15 ideas per person within the next 48 hours on how we're going to do this. And first they freaked out because 48 hours is not very long. And they said, can we have more time? And I said, well, if I give you two weeks, you're going to do all the work in the last 48 hours. So no.
True. They said, can we work in teams? Can we team up twos and threes? I said, fine, no problem. I didn't let senior leadership involved. They weren't allowed. And when they said, why 15 ideas? That's too hard. I said, because I've already had your first four ideas. So you're going to come if I ask you for four. I've had those. I'm not going to get anything. I want 15. And when we came for the day of reporting out, 48 hours later, I set some ground rules. So rule number one, do you ever play Boggle? You know, so you know if somebody says you a word, you just cross it off your list. I said, we're playing by Boggle rules. If somebody says your idea, don't say, well, I, I already had that idea. Just cross it off your list. I don't care. I'm not keeping score. I said, this is about contribution, not competition. I actually don't care if somebody has a lot of ideas or somebody has no ideas. It's about contribution, not competition. And then I let everybody report out. Each group report out two or three ideas, no more, so that everybody would get a chance to speak. Here's what I learned. Ideas one through four, I had them. Ideas. 11, 12, 13. Fantastic. And none of them were full baked. But everybody piled on and the ideas morphed into other things and they were brilliant. And absolutely I had people who had six ideas and absolutely I had people who had none. But here's what I learned. My idea people, my creatives, were my worst executors and my people who had no ideas. My best executors we took all the ideas and we organized them. Green, yellow, red. Had nothing to do with the quality of the thinking. Green ideas were ideas I could implement real cheap, real quick a week. Yellow ideas were a little bit of resources but not too bad. Could do within a month. And lead ideas were either expensive or too took too long. Had nothing to do with the quality. And we simply started with the greens and then organized them based on quality and just executed like crazy. But when I gave the people the opportunity to come up with the ideas of the thing that I was trying to solve, I got way better thinking than anything I had.
