Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation

[social align=”center”] Guest: Peter Guber Peter was the guest on the September 27, 2015 show Topics: Storytelling * Why are stories so important? * What’s the difference between a good story and a great story? * How should we think about audience and the relationship we have with them? * Have you ever been surprised by a story that you thought was great but the audience didn’t get it? * What are the three things every listener should do for better storytelling? Partners and Partnerships * Why have partnerships been such a key part of your business activities? * What is the criteria you use to select a partner? Bio Peter Guber is Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment. Guber’s most recent films from Mandalay Entertainment include The Kids Are All Right, Soul Surfer, and Bernie. He has also produced Batman, The Witches of Eastwick, and Flashdance. His films have earned over $3 billion worldwide and numerous Academy Award nominations. Peter is also a co-owner of three professional sports teams: the Golden State Warriors (NBA) , the Los Angeles Dodgers (MLB) and theLos Angeles Football Club (MLS). Peter is Chairman of Dick Clark Productions, which produces the American Music Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and other programs. He is a professor at the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television and the Anderson School of Management and an Entertainment and Media Analyst for Fox Business News. Peter most recent business book, Tell to Win – Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Connect with Peter on: * Peter Guber on Twitter * Peter Guber on Facebook * Peter Guber on LinkedIn Killer Question/Brain Hack How can I take advantage of emerging trends and fads? “Weak signals” are the equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. They are the unspoken needs and wants of your customers, and they are also the arrows pointing to what your customers are going to need and want in the future, even if they themselves don’t know it yet. If you pay attention to the weak signals, they’ll give you the heads-up that something radical, and possibly uncomfortable, is coming your way. You’re not going to find them on the front page of a newspaper or in an industry analyst report.

[social align=”center”] Internships and Reverse Mentoring Summer is long over and now we are getting into the fall. This time of year always makes me look back on the summer internships. I’m a big believer in “internships” as a way for people to “learn”. Each summer, we bring in interns across a wide range of disciplines: technical, legal, marketing and this year social media. This years interns were impressive. Over the years – I use interns to be my pulse on what is happening in the education system. In my previous role, I would select two and have them stay at my house. For their internship, they would report to someone else. At night – it was the barrage of constant questions. Why must we do something a certain way? Why aren’t we doing this? Most people think I’m nuts for even doing this. I learn so much. It’s a process I call “reverse mentoring” And what did I learn?? While there have always been over-achievers,  the “mass” of the students are not being prepared for what I call the innovation or creative economy. The world is shifting from the information/knowledge economy to the innovation/creative economy. Its about have a workforce that can “invent” solutions to the worlds problems then having the other people “manufacture” what they invent. To be successful in the innovation economy, students must have: * Critical thinking skills * Problem solving experiences * Entreprenurship / Instrapraneurship skills * Have confidence … * Understand the process to create and idea and then take it forward through execution So how do we give future generations that experiences they need? In my mind, we need to raise the visibility and prestige for our top academic students to the same level we give athletes. One person is doing that is Dean Kamen, Founder of FirstRobotics  whose missions is: .. to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership. Dean and I have a met a few times at different events and I can tell you he is passionate about giving every kid the experience and opportunity to discover their passion. Guests: Peter Lierni and Mark Varricchione are co-founders from STEMlete Peter Lierni and Mark Varricchione are co-founders from STEMlete (a play on the word “athlete”) who saw that there were a number of online communities for the self-promotion of student athletes seeking to: exhibit their athletic excellence; share their knowledge; improve their performance; get recognized; establish a following; and be recruited and succeed; however, there was nothing analogous for those individuals who have a passion and brilliance in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). They are a on a mission to change the focus; build a new kind of community; identify the world’s most promising STEM talent; and enable innovation by providing an online platform with an unprecedented collection of free capabilities to enable “STEMletes” to globally connect; communicate; collaborate; and create. In particular, they hope to give academia, industry, and others globally the opportunity to get an early line-of-sight into the world’s most promising STEM talent. You can connect with them at STEMlete.org Brain Hack/Killer Question How will you identify and locate customers in five years? Every hot trend reaches a point I like to call the “Uncle Larry moment.” When one of your older relatives announces he’s taken up something that had seem...

What goes into creating an idea that can impact 100’s of million of people? If I polled most people they would say it’s the “idea”. The core of the “idea” is table stakes but it does not guarantee success. Others would say PR and marketing. While PR and marketing are important – it does not guarantee success. So what are we missing? I have a saying I use: ” ..the different between a good innovation and great innovation is the timing” In most cases you can’t control – much less predict — timing. So what do I mean by “timing”? * Market conditions * Customer readiness * Channel readiness * Social expectations (changes) * Competitive changes * Government / regulatory So what can you do to make sure the timing is right ? Guest: Bill Geiser on wearables and smart watches Bill Geiser is a smartwatch pioneer with 20+ years focus on wearables & smartwatch innovation. He is a serial entrepreneur / intrapreneur with a talent for identifying lucrative, market opportunities and the ability to harvest them evidenced by the fact that he founded two technology start ups acquired by publicly-traded firms. His most recent company he founded was Meta Watch –  a smartwatch technology and services company with offices in Espoo, Finland & Dallas, Texas. Formed in August 2011 via spin off from the Fossil Group, Inc., the Meta Watch management team brought together over a decade of experience helping companies like Fossil, Microsoft, Palm, Sony Ericsson, adidas and others enter the smartwatch category. You follow Bill on LinkedIn Brain Hack/Killer Question What industries are analogous to ours, and what can we learn from them? No matter what business we are in, we are all fighting essentially the same fight – no matter the industy. We are all designing a product that a customer will prefer over that of our competitor. To do this, don’t just look to other widget makers to get a sense of how you are faring in the global business space. Look at other businesses & industries that have similar key elements in common with you. I find the airline industry endlessly fascinating. It, like the tech industry, has gradually found ways to make its core products less expensive and more accessible to the general public. In return, their customers have had to accept a vast reduction in services and expectations. It’s an interesting seesaw between what the customer truly wants and what they are willing to give up in order to get it. In the center are the core essentials: a safe, convenient flight at a low fare. Everything else falls away in relevance as long as the core criteria are met. What are the fundamentals that have to be in place in order to maintain an ongoing and happy relationship between you and your customer? Suppose you were the head of operations at a megachurch like Chicago’s Willow Creek or Joel Osteen’s church in Houston. Joel Osteen’s church seats almost 16,000 people, and runs four worship services plus various meeting groups every Sunday, which means that there are up to 64,000 people. High odds of getting into fender-benders, gridlock, and potentially dangerous traffic in the church’s parking lot increases as one congregation departs and the next one arrives. So what do you do?  Where do you go to learn the mechanics of moving that number of vehicles, and that number of human beings, in an efficient and safe manner? You go to the Disney Academy at Disney World.  Sixty years of crowd management has made Disney operations the undisputed champion of event control and coordination. By working with Disney, these churches could learn a few things about integrating their system of traffic flow and parking.  Fender-benders would go down, customer satisfaction would go up,

Innovation Needs Inspiration [social align=”center”] Every August, I host an annual event for about 600 people, discussing tech and innovation. This event has been going on for more than decade and I’ve been hosting it 4 years now. The challenge is how do you keep an event – or any creative endeavor fresh and interesting?? One common approach is to go out and “copy” what others are doing such as “make it just be like TED”. I’ve been going to the main TED event for years and even they are challenged to change it up. Repetition is boring. The world changes and your ideas/innovations need to change with it. We all get caught in the rut and we tell ourselves it worked for us “last time” it will work for us next time. Experience is not always a good thing. That is until it doesn’t work. Then what? How do you push yourself to constantly be looking for ideas? In my personal example, every two to three years, I go on a month-long “trend safari” in search of inspiration. I typically pick 3 to 4 events that are outside of my industry with the objective of coming back and share what inspired me. Some events I’ve gone to … * Milan Furniture Fair (April) * London Design Festival (Sept) * Paris Fashion Week * TED (March – Vancouver) * Detroit Auto Show * Maker Faire (May in San Francisco) * Comic-con .. (july – San Diego) Now that I’ve been talking about it,  I think its time to put together another on one again! I’ve always enjoyed it more when a few people are with me. Maybe I should setup a “trend safari” for a group. What do you think? Do you want to go with me? Guest: Noah Scalin Noah Scalin is an artist and activist. He founded the art & consulting firm Another Limited Rebellion in 2001 with the idea that he could make a living doing what he enjoyed and effect positive change in the world. He has authored five books on design and creativity and traveled the world bringing his message of creative potential and design activism to everyone from incarcerated teenagers to Fortune 500 executives. Noah’s artwork is collected internationally and has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, and Krause Gallery in NYC. His most recent book Skull-A-Day collects the work of his Webby Award winning yearlong daily art project of the same name. Brain Hack/Killer Questions What are your unshakable beliefs about what your customers want? One thing is to know what your customers want to do, another is to understand how they intend to get it done. It’s easy to look at their goals and tell yourself that your product will match their needs. Most organizations make major assumptions about what the customers want … they become “unshakable beliefs”. Competing companies can have the same “unshakable beliefs” but radically different strategies about how to achieve them. Example — Airbus and Boeing. Both companies brought new long-range aircraft to market at more or less the same time. However, their respective offerings, the A380 and the 787 Dreamliner reflect radically different ideas of how airlines will meet the needs and desires of their passengers. Same objectives: Both companies understand the bottom line in their industry, getting CASM—cost per available seat mile—as low as possible. Both claim that their aircrafts are highly fuel-efficient. Each also uses radically new technologies. The 787 is made of lightweight and high-durability materials The A380 boasts new integrated a...

Culture of Innovation Culture is one of those things that is hard to quantify.  When I ask executives about their culture, they are confident that they have a culture that encourages innovation.  In most cases, these same executives project their wishes for their culture and not the reality. Culture is enabled by people and their views and opinions can get in the way if you don’t stay on top of it. What kind of culture do you have? Is there a way to get a more unbiased view of your culture? Yes – by answering the followings questions: 1) Ask a number of people in your organization what they believe is the essence of what the organization stands for.  If you get different  answers, that points to lack of clarity which then means each person is projecting what they think. 2) How is your organizations the same/different from others?  If you are generic with a generic culture, then innovation is NOT part of what you are about. 3) For the people who are successful in your organization, what are their common traits?  What are the skills, abilities, etc that get people promoted? 4) What are the characteristics of people who failed in your organization? 5) Who are the 5 most respected people in your organization? Why? 6) What are the characteristic of the missed opportunities and failures of the organization? To hear how to access your organizations culture, listen to Do You Have A Culture Of Innovation.  To get all of the shows, consider subscribing to the show either on iTunes or via the RSS feed.   To learn more about how to find ideas that turn into game-changing innovations, read Beyond The Obvious.  Why? Out of habit, we still cling to the “obvious” ideas that were once true in the rapidly receding past. In order to innovate, we need to learn to identify and ignore these “obvious” rules, ideas, or beliefs.  This books is a practical guide on how to go beyond the obvious and consistently generate game-changing innovations. Order an autographed copy of the book at Innovation.Tools.