27 Aug 2022 · 41 min
In this episode Ian Peterman interviews Ben Bensaou, author of Build to Innovate, about how large organisations can democratise and systematise innovation. Bensaou argues that innovation is fundamentally customer‑centric and that companies must close two critical gaps: the distance between R&D innovators and frontline staff who interact with customers, and the distance between the organisation and the broader ecosystem of customers, non‑customers, regulators and partners. He illustrates his points with multiple case studies – the accidental discovery of P&G’s Magic Eraser from BASF’s Basotect foam, Philips’ limescale‑filter kettle derived from living with UK households, Ecocem’s low‑carbon cement that succeeded by lobbying regulators, and BASF’s shift from a commodity paint supplier to a strategic partner for automakers. Bensaou stresses the importance of rotating teams to bring diverse perspectives, listening to the “voice”, “silence” and “weak signals” of customers, and engaging non‑customers such as regulators. He contrasts cultural approaches to innovation, noting Japan’s systematic, process‑driven continuous innovation versus the Western focus on individual geniuses, and highlights how diversity, permission, simple tools and a culture that rewards ideas can boost employee engagement and talent retention. The conversation ends with a call to build a community around the book and its ideas.
Chapters
Well, it's— I found it even working in the design field. It's a lot of times the solutions to a product design doesn't come from the same person who's sat there and designed product X for 20 years. I mean, not that they're bad, like they still create new things, but when you throw a toy designer into, you know, some other, some other product, medical device, they just have such a different background and a different way of thinking about things. And when you do that, it's, it's, it's to the point I keep my team, I always move them around. We don't—
Yeah.
I don't let anybody sit on one like, oh, you're just gonna do this type of project. 'Cause it's, it allows you to pull in these different thought processes and people can go, oh, well, here's the solution. And, you know, the main team would never have figured it out because they've They've stared at it too long. It's just not— it's harder and harder to solve once you sit at a problem too long. And it's just—
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's even— of course, the other elephant in the room, if I may say, is the customer. And the key here is that when you're innovating, it's fundamentally about the customer. It's about trying to understand the customer needs, wishes, likes, pain points. Who knows that better than the people who are really at the front line facing the customer on a daily basis? I found out that there are basically 2 major gaps to close to stimulate innovation. One is the gap and the distance that exists between the would-be innovators in the company Like in big companies would be the scientists and the engineers and the R&D people and the people who know about the customers. These are typically people in sales, in marketing, in, let's say, people who are at the branch if you're a bank. These are people, and these people very often work in silos. The people who are facing the customers, they see things, and it's so important for them to be able to relate this back to the engineers. And again, if I wanted to kind of maybe volunteer an example, I could mention about— I mean, I'll take only one example from Bayer. It was— and I'll explain also where it came from structurally, because it sounds so obvious and so simple that people say, why don't companies do this more. But this is about a product called Basotect. It's a foam. It's a foam that BASF has used for ages for construction, in construction business, to— for sound.
Like insulation foam?
Yes, insulation. It's used for insulation in construction, in buildings. So it's just a foam for that. And the way this happened is that at some point there was a team trying to sell this product to— it happened to be actually a Japanese construction company. So they were there on the table and, you know, with the blueprints on the table discussing different things. And at some point, accidentally, somebody spilled a cup of coffee on the blueprints. And, and, uh, one of the, the, the German sales— salesperson kind of inadvertently kind of grabbed whatever he could that was close, and it was a slab of, of, um, of Basotect foam, and he wiped, he wiped the coffee. He wiped the coffee, and the coffee was all gone and all that, but, but then he kind of noticed that when he was doing that, it also wiped, uh, the, the ink on the, uh, on the blueprints.
Oh.
So he kind of thought, this, this is kind of strange, right? So he— but you see what is important here, and this is the turning point, is that when I— when he went back, he had noticed he had seen something that nobody had told him about or nobody knew about, and then he explicitly made a call to the R&D people. And he went to see the R&D people and to explain what he had seen, that there was maybe a property that we didn't know about this foam. And actually, it became the start to, you know, an exercise that the R&D people started. And then they went to see P&G, actually. And in the end, to cut the story short, it became a product that many people have in their kitchen. It's called the Magic Cleaner. I mean, you might have seen this foam, this white foam.
The white foam, the magic eraser you scrub off walls.
Yes, so this is where it came from. It was a totally serendipitous accident where— and the foam is still used for insulation, but it developed a completely new business for P&G and of course BASF as a provider. But the important thing is to realize why that happened, and that happened happened because, uh, uh, do you say upstream? Upstream. Beforehand, uh, BASF had invested in, in a unit called Perspective that was used to train people, and then train people systematically in, in, uh, uh, concepts and techniques focused on customer centricity and innovation. So you see, the sales guy and the R&D people had all gone through this type of training, and it had created a completely different mindset, a different attitude. In the old days, the salesperson would have faced— would have seen this problem, you know, this foam erasing thing, would have said, oh, this is really strange, and then would go on.
And then throw it away.
go on trying to sell the foam and would never contact the R&D people.
Right.
I think this is what I mean by closing the gap between the would-be innovators and the people who are facing the customer. That's an internal challenge, by the way, because they work so much in silos. I think the second gap that needs to be closed is the gap, the distance between, let's say, the organization and the customer. Everybody, in some ways, not only the salespeople, but they need to learn how to focus on the customer and to listen to what I call 3 things. One, they have to learn how to listen to the voice of the customer. I mean, it's really clear that very often when people are engaged with their customer, they are very often in what I call a tell mode or a sell mode.
Oh, okay.
They have a solution. They have an understanding or an interpretation of what the customer needs, and they're basically trying to sell that solution to the customer. To really be able to innovate, you have to switch Again, there are tools, there are techniques to help people learn how to do that, but you have to switch from a tell mode to a listen mode where you really listen to the customer with empathy. Try to understand what is the problem they're trying to solve beyond, very often beyond what your product is offering. Try to understand that problem. The second one is learn to listen to what I call the silence of the customer. And the silence of the customer is kind of the things that they don't tell you. They don't necessarily volunteer or don't tell you. And they don't tell you not because they're trying to hide something from you, but it's either because they don't know themselves, or they might know of a problem but they won't tell you because they don't think it's your job to fix it.
Right, right, right.
And here I can relate to an example again that will kind of give some sort of an image to your audience, is the way that Philips, the consumer electronics company in Holland, that's the way they developed the the new kettle that had a limescale filter. The first, the first limescale filter kettle was developed by Philips, and the way it happened is, is that they had a project team working on the design of a new kettle, and at that time they had decided to send some of the team members to live— I mean, this was in the UK. This was— they were targeting the UK market because their market share had completely kind of plummeted, and they were trying to revive their presence in the UK market. So they sent a few people to actually live in some families, and it took only a few days for some people to come back to the team and start to explain what they had seen. They had noticed that people were were dealing with, had a hard time dealing with the limescale that starts floating in the— because there was a lot of calcium in the water.
Right.
So when people were preparing for tea, they were struggling with the limescale problem in the tea, and this is obviously a problem that they knew about, and the reason is because they saw people trying to scoop the limescale with their spoon, you know, to get it out of the tea.
Right.
But the customer never told them about this problem. But why? Because if they had a problem with the limescale, they wouldn't complain to the kettle manufacturer. They complained to the water authorities.
Right, right. That's where you would think to go.
That's where you would think. And it took only a few weeks and months to file for the patent. But Philips came up with the first. I mean, you can check your kettles now. Most kettles have this little filter at the mouth that kind of stops most of the limescale when you're trying to pour the boiling water into your cup of tea. So this is a good example of what I call the silence of the customer. I mean, the customer wouldn't tell you because they don't know or they don't think they should tell you. But you have to— I call it you have to find out about their needs in spite of them.
Right.
In spite of them. And also, this is what I call the weak signals. This is not a big signal that everybody is bragging about. This is a weak signal. If you allow me, the third thing that you need people to learn how to deal with the customers is the whole area of non-customers. The non-customers, people always think, is the customers you couldn't have, the customers from your competitors. As a matter of fact, when you are in any kind of business, you have a whole ecosystem around you. You have your direct customer. In B2B, you might have your customers' customers. You have suppliers. You have influencers. You have regulators. You have prescribers. You have a whole ecosystem of agents who can influence your customers' decision or even become potential customers for you. And here I thought of telling you about the story about the cement companies that, uh, that, uh, uh, is part of the, the companies that I talk about. It's a, it's an Irish company called Ecocem. So you, you, you might know that, uh, uh, the, the construction company uses a lot of cement, and, and, and the, the big, the big kind of market share is for a cement called Portland, Portland cement, and it has a very high, very, very high carbon footprint.
Yeah, it's a major, major problem.
Major, major. It's maybe one of the most biggest contributors to the warming effect, actually, the cement company.
Yeah, I've seen some reports.
Right, and Ecocem kind of, uh, uh, I, I identified, uh, a, a new cement. It's called GG— GGBS, ground granulated, uh, uh, ground granulated blast furnace slag.
Okay.
Uh, so this is, this is, this is something that exists. It's a technology that exists, but, um, the cement company is not necessarily motivated to put it in place. It has, it has a much much lower carbon footprint. As a matter of fact, it produces 32 kilos of CO2 emissions per ton when the regular cement produces 800 kilos. So this is—
That's a 20x decrease.
Yes, yes. And of course, it's not that technology is not there, but the problem is that The cement company is an oligopoly. It's an oligopoly. It's dominated by a few very large firms that have invested in this regular traditional cement, and for them to change, to adopt this new technology, is something that they're postponing. In a sense, they are aware of the problem, they're getting the the pressure from, from the customers, because the construction companies know that the end customers, the customers' customers, are very sensitive to these issues. But this is an interesting thing about how Ecosem focused on non-customers to create an innovation. And let me tell you what they did, is that they, they tried to— so Ecosem is, is a leader in this GGBS ground granulated blast furnace slag. So 2 aspects to it. One is that it's lower in carbon footprint, but at the same time, it's built from a residue from the steel mills. So this is a leftover.
Oh, really?
So this is actually recycling the leftovers from from steel mills. So it is a fantastic technology. It has the same level of performance, if not better, and quality than the regular Portland cement. But of course, the established players, they're just kind of poo-pooing all the time this product with the customers. So when Ecocem, who is a leader in GGBS cement, tries to approach the customers, they get always rejected because the dominant players, they just kind of criticize and, and, and, and, and block all this all the time. So what, uh, his name is Donald, Donald O'Reilly, the founder of Ecocem, realized is that the problem might not be the customers, because the customers want environmentally kind of, you know, advanced cement. It's the competitors. And then he identified the regulators. So what he did is that he— and he explained, and it's explained a little bit in the book— he spent almost 4 years trying to convince the regulatory bodies to look at GGBS technology. He lobbied for them to convince them to include in their commissions some people who would be knowledgeable about GGBS technology. It took him 4 years to get the regulators to actually include people who would know about GGBS, and it took him that long to actually have these— in France, for instance, the regulatory bodies to accept GGBS as a high-quality cement that is legitimate in the industry. And this is, this is, this is where the, the growth for Ecocem started. And, and, and the important thing here, if you, if you will, is that the innovation was not focused on the customers. The innovative idea was by focusing on the regulators. So this is what I call the non-customers. You don't need to always focus on just technology because they had the technology, but to unlock the market was to unlock the market with the regulators through processes of explanation, training, educating the regulators.
Right.
I think these are real challenges for organizations is to, again, get everybody to understand that innovating is part of their job, to give them permission, to create time and space for them. And then of course most people will tell you, I'm not R&D, I'm not a, you know, creative person. Right, right.
I just clean things.
Yes, then you have to kind of give them a few, just like we were talking about the gym, you know, with a few equipment, you know, a few dumbbells, a few bars, you know, you just kind of teach them how to, with, you know, tools that are simple, intuitive, uh, you know, very often, uh, the ones that I have in the book, for instance, are very visual, and kind of gradually teach everybody how to listen to the voice of the customer, to the silence of the customer, and sometimes to pay attention to these non-customers that are floating around.
Right. Well, that's— yeah, this is great. This is very important to be looking at All those areas, because I feel like you're, you're right on the money. Like, we have this very— we have such a narrow idea of innovating, and you're, you're really pulling out and you're like, no, no, let's— we can, we can do more innovating if you kind of pull your blinders off. Really, that's what you're doing is take your blinders off.
Yes.
Actually look, look at what's happening, look at the inputs. feedback and start kind of democratizing in a way, especially inside big companies. And I feel like it's a theme of these— we've had these silos, right? We're very good as humans, we're very good at creating boxes and then sticking everyone and everything into it. Yes.
And by the way, Ian, the boxes are not only internal, but they're only external. Like, now you mentioned about the boxes, we even create boxes between firms. I mean, this is another interesting example of BASF. They've— because they've been focusing on their customers and learned how to work with their customers in a different way, they've been able to completely change the business model. I mean, a great example is how they work with the automakers. Again, I'll tell you what was the traditional way. The traditional way they were working This is the paint and coating business for BASF.
Right.
So they used to provide coating material and paint to their car customers on demand. Basically, they would receive the order. This was a very commodity business. These automakers thought that they knew better, so they would order, and then they put all these chemical companies in competition and And get the best price. But then what happened is that BSF started to work with a few of their customers and try to have a closer partnership. And they realized that as a matter of fact, like for instance, with Mercedes-Benz, these car manufacturers, they don't know much about coating. They don't know much about paint. They know how to design and assemble cars and sell them and build a brand. But when it comes to coating, how to even choose the colors and how how more importantly to apply the coating and the paints to the metal without having kind of too much waste and be environmentally inefficient and ineffective. They didn't know that.
Right.
The ones who know about coating are the chemical companies. So they started to actually work closer. And the first, in the first stage, they created a new type of relationship where the engineers at the coating company would get involved earlier in the stage of designing a car to help the car manufacturers choose the best coating for the product that they were trying to put in the market. And they would also get their quality and operations engineers to go on the plants of the car manufacturers to teach them how to apply the coating and the paint in a much more environmentally friendly, safer also for the workers, and to help them save on the coating. So that was like a big revolution for the industry. And now the latest innovation they have come to is that now the car manufacturers, they give full responsibility. They completely, in a sense—
Totally passed it on.
pass it on. You say, they tell them, now you're responsible for the coating and paint, and you do what you have to do because you know much better than us about it. So you can see that creating innovation, this is not a product innovation, this is not a technology innovation.
Right, innovation.
It's innovation in, I mean, people call it business model or how they work. And by working together, by shifting responsibility, I mean, in changing the form and the limits of the box, basically they changed the box where now in the car company, companies, there's this chemical company that has taken a whole process, responsibility for a whole process. You have complete interpenetration of processes and structures, and that is saving them not only in terms of cost and getting them better quality, but it is doing a lot of saving in terms of bad chemicals out there.
Right.
I think this is a very interesting example also where innovation is not only where you think. It can be in the way that you work with your partners.
Right. Well, I think, and I think people still, a lot of, a lot of companies still struggle with that, of the idea of I must, I must own everything, right? The idea of, oh, well, it all has to be me. And, and yet it's not, oftentimes it's not the best way to work. If you're, you know, if you're in a specialized area, you should have somebody that's specialized. And that's how I run That's how I run my design firm. We do lots of things, but I don't have an engineer try to figure out how to do graphic design. Like, that's it. It never works out really well for anybody when you, when you're trying to have one person or even one set, one team, be this all-encompassing expert, especially cars are complicated. There's a lot of specialties that go in, go into a car. So you wouldn't want your engine designer to be designing, you know, the interior of the car, for example. You don't want that. I mean, you maybe have— really good to have them give some input, like let them put their brain towards solving some problems, but that they shouldn't be responsible for it.
Right, right.
And I think, and maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think part of that Bear example of putting it out there is that people, when you aren't, when you aren't directly responsible for the exact outcome, you can put out ideas that might seem a little weird, may seem a little out there.
Absolutely.
But those are sometimes the ideas where somebody else goes, that's the fix. That's, that's how we actually fix it. But it removes that Direct. Oh, my job is, my job is tied to me coming up with the right answer, and I need to work in this really highly known zone.
And that's, that's, that's really the result, in a sense. What you're talking about is, as, as you said earlier as well, is really the result of these organizations that we've built over, over decades, over centuries, that are really geared towards execution. And it's all about efficiency. It's all about control. And when you think about it from a purely theoretical point of view, the best organizations for that are hierarchical.
Right.
The best organizations are hierarchical. You know what you have to do. You just have to, you know, have a division of labor, division of responsibility, specialize people in what they do, and create these vertical silos. But for innovation, That is because these vertical structures are very good at what I call problem solving, because you get the best people, the specialists, to solve the problem, which you kind of already know, or you have already influenced the definition of that problem. But innovation, in a sense, because you don't know what it's going to be, is not about problem solving, it's about problem finding.
Yes.
It's about finding how many new problems can you solve for the customer that you didn't know before, because then your execution engine is going to be very efficient at solving the problem once you give them the new problem. So the challenge is to find new problems. And this is where exactly what you were talking about, diversity is essential. Diversity, people coming from different departments, different backgrounds, different sensitivities. There, it can't be just the scientists who have it all. You need to bring people from all sorts of places. It has a very interesting effect that I've seen in many companies is that once you give people, everybody, the permission and the space to be engaged in innovating activities, it doesn't have to be a full-time job. This can Right, right.
It can be 10 minutes you spend on a platform looking through if you have like, oh, I have an idea. Absolutely.
Exactly. And what the effect is, is that it completely motivates people. It gives them fun in their job. They feel that they can contribute to the future of the company. I think it is very motivating for a lot of people.
I wonder if it really helps with, with employee engagement.
Absolutely.
If it helps you to, to, because you're, you're more a part of it, right? You're, you're really being able to influence the company and be able to put, put more of your, of you and, and be able to solve problems instead of, instead of staring there seeing a problem, knowing, knowing you have the solution, but you shouldn't say anything because it's not your Absolutely.
I think once people, I mean, understand, you know, and this is where middle management is important in explaining that. But once employees understand that they have a job to do, and this is something that they understand, but at the same time, there's a desire that the senior-level management and their boss wants their ideas. I mean, it's always amazing how people are very good at doing their job, but that suddenly they, they get out of the house and they get out of the office and they become suddenly very creative, you know, outside of the office, helping with the kids, helping with the community, doing all sorts of things that are really creative. It's, it's almost as if as soon as they walk the door of the office, they turn off this, this innovating muscle. So that, that power is there latent, and it's a question of of really giving permission to people, not only permission to use it, but tell them that you want it, you need it.
Right.
And, and, and, and of course they'll have crazy ideas, they'll have good ideas, bad ideas, but at least they know that it is something that the boss wants from them. And when they do, they're getting recognized for that. I think this is really the important thing, is not to kill that, that energy. And of course They might need, you know, a few tools, a few frameworks to help them think about, learn how to do innovation. And again, this is a new skill. This is a new skill for them where they can express themselves. And I think that engagement, quality of work life is improved. I've seen, it's mentioned in the book, some people who actually left their companies because they had a great idea and it was rejected. And then they went to another company. Yeah. Company that, you know, now you will, you will see more and more companies use as a way to attract talent, use this notion that they are able to not only express their creativity, but also to enhance it and to use it to contribute to the company. I think this is a very important way to keep talent, especially the new generation talent.
Right. Yeah, I think it's really important. Like, we're— I feel like we're moving to this zone, and we can see it in job shifts and stuff, where there's a much more focus on creativity. People want the creativity, they want an outlet to it. They don't, you know, the idea of sitting in a manufacturing job isn't really—
Yeah.
Isn't really exciting to, especially the the latest generation coming through that's not really utilizing them. And so I think it's— this plays into that as well of like, okay, how do we make it so that we can be more creative? Because that's, you know, we can roboticize and automate most things really, but except for this, we can't. This is something that is special to us as humans.
Right.
Right. That we come up— we're very creative. We come up with all kinds of things and, you know, we'll build a robot to do it or whatever, but we have to come up with the ideas. And having this kind of platform is really important to allow that to happen, which is really great. Last thing, to wrap this all up, but I'd love for you to expand a little bit because you've worked in different cultures. You studied Japanese business, and that's been, you know, something we've all talked about, of how efficient and how they've been able to keep running for a long— they have some of the oldest companies that have existed for the longest duration. What kind of elements do you— have you pulled from in all this research that really helped you with this study of innovation? Is there— Any key things and takeaways that, that you can share about that you've discovered through, through all of your, your research?
You mean from Japan specifically?
Yeah, Japan, or— oh, okay. You've been in a few different cultures.
Oh, okay.
We all have— yes, you know, we all have our different mentalities, right? And a lot of us, we sit in our own zone. Again, again, we're all siloed in our own culture and our own countries. So it's— I'm curious about your perspective on how—
Yeah, I think, I think what is, what is interesting is that, uh, you remember when we started the, the whole, uh, the discussion of the whole narrative of, uh, the, um, innovation coming from the, let's call it the outlier, you know, the, the, the individual genius. And, and, and there's, there's, there's some sort of a cultural narrative in, in many, in many countries. I mean, uh, prominently in the US, Anglo-Saxon world, European world, where you know, we glorify, like you said, you know, the Einstein of the world or the, uh, you know, the Elon Musk of the world. And, and, and in a sense, we do have educational systems, we have, uh, family structures, cultural structures, um, you know, uh, you know, institutional systems that kind of make it easy for, for, for that kind of, uh, type of innovation. As I said, there's, there's a huge potential, uh, in, in the rest of the people because these people are innovative but they don't necessarily have a voice and there's no mechanism for that. And in an interesting way, uh, very often in Asia, like countries like Japan or, or, or Korea that we know quite well, South Korea, um, uh, the, the cultural context is not necessarily creating these unique geniuses. This is not, this is not in the cultural norms, this is not in the cultural mechanism, this is not the, the, the, the, the objective of the educational system, if you will, or the way that the relationship between the, the industry and the educational system work. But they're very strong in processes. They're very strong in— so we knew for the Japanese, for instance, they taught us everything about quality management. They taught us a lot about manufacturing processes. It's really about getting everybody involved, you know, and having a process to help people do what they do. And I think a lot of the ideas, the new ideas about innovation, are very much inspired or anchored in what we can learn from these firms, that actually everybody can innovate if you give them some tools that, you know, it's not only the genius who knows them just by, I don't know, by, you know, infusion or whatever, but these are things that can be taught, that you can have, you know, embedded processes that people follow on a regular basis. regular basis. It's not the same type of innovation. It's more kind of continuous systematic innovation, but it is something that people who are not naturally creative can learn. Again, the sports analogy can work here where you take regular people and you teach them how to do certain activity, train them, give them tools, Make it a habit. Out of that, by the way, you might have a few geniuses pop up, but there's no guarantee.
Right.
And that's kind of what I learned from Japan and looking at companies like Samsung. I mean, you know, you could see that the way that Apple has succeeded in the early days with the genius type of, you know, breakthrough and industry-revolutionizing kind of innovations à la Steve Jobs, and the way that Samsung, for instance, has been able to be very successful. I mean, they've been very successful at continuous innovation.
Right.
And you could even argue that the new Apple hasn't come with any kind of new breakthrough, but they've been extremely successful nevertheless. And, and, and I would argue innovative, but innovative in a different way, in a different manner, right? And same thing for— same thing for Amazon, for that matter. We've had that— we'd have Jeff Bezos, and now we have a different type of leadership and different type of innovation engine, right?
That makes sense. It is such an interesting thing. Culturally to see, see what that, that difference— and it's all innovating, right? It's still— we're still innovating. It's just a different, different approach to it.
So, and it's about learning from each other. I mean, you know, as, as, as we know, a lot of, a lot of Asians are coming to Silicon Valley to try to learn about one type of innovation, and we're here trying to learn about the other types.
Well, collectively, if we mix them, maybe we can— maybe we Find the best way to innovate, which I think is—
Absolutely. Absolutely. This is, this is, this is what it is about. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
Amazing. Well, I really appreciate you taking time to get on this podcast. It's been great chatting with you. And for, for anyone that's looking for the book, we're going to have a link in the description, everything. Build to Innovate, it's out. So Please, if you're interested in this, it would be great, check out the book, get it. And yeah, any last words, thoughts you want to share before we wrap up?
Yeah, I mean, as you said, there's a website for the book, and for people who want to know, to get new information, additional information, there's a— we started a blog with different posts. that go beyond— that go beyond what is in the book, kind of maybe sometimes deeper in some topics. And of course, we'd love to be able to connect the community. I was talking to people yesterday in Spain, and they were interested, and they would love to be connected with other people who read the book who have nice stories to share. So I think It's all about building the community.
Amazing. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. And I really appreciate you making some time to be on the show.
Thank you, Ian. I loved it.
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