Chapter 8
Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

If you’ve ever gone out for sushi, chances are you’ve eaten raw salmon. And why not? It’s typically on every sushi menu, and you probably consider it a staple of Japanese cuisine, just like tuna. If you were to travel to Japan, you’d find salmon on sushi menus everywhere as well. It might be hard to believe then, but all of this salmon sushi and sashimi is actually the result of a carefully designed Norwegian government-funded sushi initiative—yes, you read that right. If you had gone to Tokyo back before the ’80s, you would not have been able to find salmon sushi anywhere. Sure, you could have ordered cooked salmon as part of some delicious dish, but not raw. Most salmon in Japan—having come from the Pacific—was known for its parasites and would have never been consumed uncooked by the Japanese.1

It’s funny how perceptions change; or maybe it’s not so much funny as it is just a matter of effective communications. Enter Norway and their abundant supply of Norwegian salmon, which, by the way, is now the dominant fish used in sushi restaurants around the world.2 The 1980s found Norway with a real surplus of the fish. The country’s government had subsidized their fishing industry for decades, and by the late ’80s decided they needed to stop.3 They didn’t know what to do with the vast amounts of salmon piling up, so they looked to the global market for ideas. That’s when they struck on pitching their product to a nation that already ate a lot of fish—Japan. But why sushi? Why not just sell it as a regular old fish that consumers would need to cook? Well, economics, my dear friends: the capitalist dollar (or in this case kroner) at work. Fish for sushi could demand a much higher price than for fish that would be baked, grilled, or smoked.

But just to say, “Eat salmon sushi,” wasn’t an easy sell, particularly to a nation that knows a thing or two about seafood, and happens to be the ultimate authority on sushi. The thought of raw salmon turned most stomachs in Japan, as the people of the country were convinced they’d get sick from the parasites. Norwegian salmon did not have the same problems as the Pacific salmon—it was totally fine to eat raw, and in fact quite good—but try convincing Japanese customers of that. Well, that’s exactly what Norway did.

The Norwegian government started by first listening to their targeted customers to figure out why they were so scared of what seemed like a perfectly good sushi and sashimi fish. Norway actually spent millions on extensive market research just to understand the Japanese perception of salmon sushi.4 Complaints from customers included that the taste, texture, smell, and color were all off. Some even said the head of the fish was the wrong shape.5 Once they understood these concerns, Norway put a marketing plan into action, pitching their salmon as fresh, safe, and clean, creating commercials that showed the natural wonder of the country’s mountains, fjords, and sea, and they even threw in a Viking cartoon for good measure.6 Norway’s not-so-secret government-backed “Project Japan” was off and running. The government eventually convinced one supplier to buy around 5,000 tons of frozen salmon, which wasn’t even that much considering the amount Norway had on ice.7 It was the first inroad into a huge market.

Norwegian salmon also developed its own brand evangelists in Japan, including celebrity chefs like Yutaka Ishinabe, who would endorse the product on the Japanese cooking show Iron Chef in the 1990s.8 Salmon sushi took off in such a major way that Norway actually started having trouble keeping up with the demand.9 In time, sushi spread around the world, and the salmon came with it as a staple. Today, Norway’s seafood industry is stronger than ever, exporting over 8.6 billion NOK (or around $1 billion USD) worth of seafood in January 2019 alone. Not only did the country alter sushi-eating habits around the world, but the return on Norwegian taxpayers’ money has been immense, with a huge boost in the country’s economic power and the creation of jobs across Norway. If it weren’t for the art of asking the right questions, listening, and an effective marketing and communications campaign, none of this would likely have ever happened.

Though I’ve hinted at this idea throughout the preceding pages, now that the book is nearing its end, I think it’s time to make sure I slam home the principle that often separates success from failure and might just rescue your innovation transformation some day: innovation requires you to communicate, communicate, communicate. And then? Communicate some more.

When communication is at its best, so is innovation. For the concept to take hold, you must communicate effectively with multiple audiences, understanding what they care about and how best to connect with them. Internally, the focus is not just on your employees, but also on your fellow leaders and managers, along with your executives and stakeholders. Externally, you’re speaking to your customers and partners of course, but you also want to make your voice heard by the rest of your industry, competitors, collaborators, and the general public, as many of them are potential consumers or employees as well.

You have to identify these internal and external stakeholders, figure out what matters most to them, and constantly reach out to them to get their perspectives and listen to their feedback. Besides giving you priceless information about their desires and needs, this communication will also help you build stronger relationships by giving your stakeholders vested interest in the success of your project. You can’t just tell them about lofty concepts either; you have to show them the actual value you’re delivering, or will deliver, and how it will benefit them. Remember, no one’s here for lip service.

It’s common sense that people won’t buy your products or services if they aren’t aware of their benefits, or their mere existence. The same idea applies to your innovation efforts or programs—whether inside or outside your organization, vertically or horizontally, no one is going to care about them if they don’t know about them. And if no one cares, then eventually they’ll fail or get defunded, whichever comes first, and you can kiss any potential culture of innovation goodbye.

Moreover, strong communication is necessary when developing and executing on strategy. So even though I suggest shouting the gospel of innovation from the top of any nearby mountains (and across any fjords), communication’s even more important when it actually comes to the complex, difficult work of rallying the troops and “getting things done.” It’s also key to every actionable principle in this book: instilling the urgency of constant change; soliciting employee feedback, getting everyone on the same page, and making strategy easy to understand; setting joint goals and explaining metrics to stakeholders; executing in small measurable milestones; building diverse cross-functional teams; listening and talking to ecosystem partners; and then driving outcomes—none of this is happening without clear, concise, consistent, and creative communication.

Invest in Communications Skills and Capabilities

With the growth of digital communication, our ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, and at any time has become commonplace. We think nothing of sending out an email (293.6 billion are estimated to go out each day10), sharing pictures with complete strangers of meals at sushi joints, and communicating digitally with dozens of “friends” whom we’ve never met in real life. Most of this book was written while collaborating with my editors on the other side of the country through Webex. We’ve come a long way from the time verbal communication emerged an estimated 1.75 million years ago.11 You’d think in that time we’d have it all figured out, but of course, we don’t. We have all the technology we need at our fingertips to conduct a last-minute meeting from across multiple time zones, but that doesn’t guarantee it will be a productive one. As cultural, social, and technological changes continue, honest conversations in which we all speak and listen only become more imperative.

Two-way, open communication is essential in our personal and professional lives, but it is persistently lacking. When it comes to the workplace, it almost seems like leaders and employees barely talk among themselves, let alone to one another. Try asking some people in your office about your company’s goals, and you’ll probably be unpleasantly surprised by the answers you receive. According to one survey, a measly 14 percent of employees understand their company’s planned strategy.12 Only 14 percent! Obviously, the other 86 percent aren’t getting the message, assuming someone is communicating the strategy with them in the first place.

Another survey found that only 40 percent of workers know their organization’s mission statement (let’s not get into the fact that, of that 40 percent, more than half of them are not motivated by this mission).13 What has truly astonished me over the years is that I’ve found that most people actually don’t seem to know how much money their company is making, what products are being sold outside of their department, and who their top customers are. I’d be amazed if the majority of employees of public companies even listen to their quarterly earnings calls.

Research from 2019 found that executives, talent developers, and people managers believe communication skills are more important than collaboration skills or role specific ones, and almost as critical as leadership skills.14 Still, investment in communications is generally the last priority in many innovation teams or programs. Leaders pour money into hardware, software, and engineering capabilities, basically anything else but communications. The irony is undeniable: given the pace of technology, many technical skills will be obsolete within a few years, but leaders are happy to fund their development. Communication skills, however, will stay with employees throughout the rest of their careers, and despite a clear need to invest in this area, the development of these skills is often not funded at all.

Most of us in the “innovation trade” know that when it comes to products, the biggest question that we often overlook is not “Can it be built?” but “Should it be built?” The only way to answer that question, though, and potentially save our organizations from market failure, embarrassment, and the loss of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, requires us to speak with, and listen to, the entire ecosystem. We need to consider communication just like any other skill—it must be developed and practiced to be used correctly and effectively and then embedded in everything we do, especially when it comes time to put innovation into action.

Communication Leads to Transformation

You need to make sure people recognize innovation and understand its worth and potential throughout your organization and into the greater ecosystem. With the right messaging, you can demonstrate the value of your programs, products, and services, and how your innovation efforts play a critical role in their success. Internally, you need to have a simple message that clarifies innovation strategy and goals—both the long-term ones and the short, measurable milestones—and, when applicable, provides examples of when these have been a success. This information should be easy to comprehend and shared with all the involved players: from employees to leadership, among leadership, back to the employees and customers, and then out into the market. This “innovation messaging” must also be reiterated on a regular basis.

Every employee needs to know how your organization innovates, and why, not to mention what role they play and what is expected of them. To get these points across, try taking a new approach, not the same old boring one-way corporate messaging. Just look at the global insurance firm Assurant. With employees in fifteen countries, the firm needed a simple way to explain their strategy to employees, so they decided to gamify it with a board game. Everyone from the CEO to the mailroom clerk ended up playing it. As a result, more than 82 percent of Assurant’s employees felt more engaged.15 It was a great approach to making everyone feel included and valued, and, most importantly, they associated the strategy with something fun and exciting.

Just as in developing strategy and measuring innovation’s effects, communication is essential to maintaining transparency. And transparency builds trust. Though you must highlight successes and where the company’s innovation efforts are having the greatest impacts, it’s equally as important to show where these efforts are falling short, why, and when. Your employees are going to know when you’re not being totally forthright—they have eyes, they have ears, they’ll realize when something isn’t working. If you’re upfront with them, you will earn their trust and, in so doing, you’ll have an easier time opening them up to the possibilities of adopting innovation mindsets. If you show them that you’re paying attention to innovation and are serious about its prospects, they’ll be more likely to provide their input and take steps to get involved. In that way, a sense of ownership is created throughout the company.

As it’s surely clear by now, innovation is high-risk, high-reward—small mistakes in messaging communication can have disastrous effects. Once you’ve lost the attention or respect of your audience, you have to work to get them back. The process may need to begin all over again. That’s why consistency is so crucial. If regular channels of communication are open, there’s a better chance of keeping everyone on the same page and connected to the end goal. Without consistent and ongoing communication, you can’t transform your culture into one of innovation. The right level of communication is what will result in that ultimate change, first internally and then externally.

Start Internally

Any innovation involves the practical art of bringing others on board. As discussed, you must convince employees and executive leadership that the time and resources redirected toward innovation are going to be well spent, not wasted. Even if you can prove that an innovation will be successful or is already showing positive results, you still need to make sure everyone hears and internalizes this good news. Innovation works, but unless you show the value, and market it to your stakeholders, no one is going to pay attention. If no one hears about the benefits, they’ll assume there are none. Weak communication leads to lost messages, and your strategy will fail to receive the attention it deserves. If no data is given, people tend to just make it up, and normally what they make up is negative.

Just as innovation execution needs to be consistent so does your communication. You can’t just shout out a few nice words and move on. If you try feeding people empty platitudes they’re going to catch on, writing you off along with whatever you’re pitching. If that “whatever” happens to be innovation, you’re taking some major steps backward, and recovery will be costly. So the first step in your internal communication strategy must come from genuinely connecting with employees.

Connect with Employees

The top three reasons people dislike their jobs are all related to problems surrounding communication: “lack of direction from management,” “poor communication overall,” and “constant change that is not well communicated.”16 Of course, I understand not everyone “likes” their job—there are days they hate it, sometimes love it, think it’s “meh,” can’t believe they didn’t take that other job when they had the chance, and so on. In fact, most of us probably have some type of love/hate relationship with what we do for a living. And that’s fine: it’s okay to have mixed feelings about our work, but it’s not okay to give out mixed messages. A lack of open communication and transparency causes issues for employees, making it harder for them to get their jobs done. When they don’t have clear direction, they’ll be at a loss for what to do.

This lack of clarity only leads to mounting problems. People get confused, which leads to frustration. Frustration leads to anger, resentment, and disengagement. Next thing you know your teams are unhappy at work all the time and that love/hate relationship becomes hate/hate, and if you’re the leader, that feeling might get projected onto you. At that point, good luck getting any cooperation when you bring up the “I” word. If employees don’t know what they’re being measured on (discussed in Chapter 3), they don’t know what to focus on. If it’s not fully clear that innovation is a priority, then it’s never going to make it to the top of the to-do list.

If innovation is not getting across to your employees and your goals are being ignored, you need to refocus your efforts in an attempt to begin developing an environment of innovation communication. Keep in mind that this doesn’t just mean a presentation on the topic; this means creating an atmosphere in which employees are actively encouraged to engage by expressing their own ideas and developing them for the benefit of the organization. Just as you need to look to employees for suggestions on strategy (as outlined in Chapter 2), you also need to support their work. If they have ideas, you want to hear them out and be able to implement them when possible. In that way, a two-way conversation develops in which everyone is thinking about, and talking about, innovation transformation.

Not every company is small enough to just hash out these ideas in a conference room or even a town hall meeting. Especially with large global organizations, there needs to be a way to connect everyone around strategy and goals. That’s where employee forums, interest groups, and specific innovation forums come in handy. These outlets provide an opportunity to keep the conversation around innovation alive, kicking, and ready for more, no matter the size of the company. For example, at the media and information company Thomson Reuters, the employee communications team launched an internal video channel on their internal Innovation Network site, asking employees to submit their own videos with innovation-related content. The site became the number one most viewed site in the company’s entire network, as employees at all levels exchanged their thoughts and ideas on innovation.17

Posting messages from the CEO, sharing customer feedback, or highlighting articles from outside media on your company’s successes (and failures) can all contribute to making innovation part of an organization’s culture. And none of them require a large investment either. You can just as easily utilize inexpensive online platforms to create members-only groups and forums as you can with expensive ones. Don’t let tech get in the way—it’s more important to find a simple solution to connect with employees, on their own terms if possible, than worry about special platforms or programs.

Forums like this provide an opportunity to develop the feedback loop previously discussed, in which employees can give their opinion, present their ideas, and share how they implemented them. The whole point is to engage as many people as possible and help them transition into an innovation mindset. If you’re starting a new initiative based around innovation principles, you’re going to need to get to the point where you feel like you are almost overcommunicating. Vague recommendations or suggestions are not nearly as effective as hard, straightforward direction. You don’t need to become a helicopter boss, but you do need to help people stay on track. It’s hard enough for most leaders who aren’t used to tapping into their inner-innovation-self, but unless you can work with employees and co-workers to develop understanding and confidence, nothing is going to get done.

This confidence comes from your support and recognition, and it results in a sense of personal responsibility and a feeling of collective ownership. If you work together to set reasonable expectations and goals and communicate them through all possible channels, they’re much more likely to be met, and even surpassed. Helping them to develop the right soft skills to succeed takes it even a step further. At that point, employees are becoming truly involved, which is what you’re ultimately aiming for. As a leader, you want them to know that they’re part of the team, the overall community within the organization—they should have some skin in the game. In doing so, they’re becoming emotionally invested, engaged, and empowered, leading to pride in their work and value. As a result, they are more likely to become active advocates for your organization and brand. And let’s admit it—when we see that people are happy where they work, we are more likely to respect those brands and buy from them.

Unfortunately, most employees aren’t shown how their work makes an impact, especially on the company’s bottom line. One survey discovered that less than half (47 percent) of workers are able to see the connection between their job’s duties and the company’s resulting financials.18 If they don’t realize the effect they’re creating, then they may end up thinking all their work is in vain. When that’s the case, that common frustration and anger arise and people start looking for the exit door.

Communication can solve this problem, reeling employees back in or, better yet, stopping a mass exodus before it starts. If you can draw a direct line from employees’ efforts to innovation strategy successes, and then on to an increase in the hardest metric of them all—I’m talking money here, of course—then they will feel even more valued. A cycle begins to develop: engaged employees lead to a focus on innovation, which results in financial success, further inspiring employees to lean in to innovation further. If this cycle persists, executives are certainly going to take notice, but they’ll still need some guidance from middle managers and communication teams as well.

Show Executives the Way

As first looked at in Chapter 2, for innovation to succeed, you need to get vertical buy-in from top to bottom. Though much of your focus will be on helping to drive strategy with employees, you have to ensure that support rains down, not just trickles, from above. The key is to make innovation relevant to the business for all leaders. It doesn’t matter if they’re in engineering, sales, or customer experience—everyone needs to understand the importance of innovation to the organization’s actual success. Communicating with leaders is essential, as they are the ones customers and employees look to as the face of your organization. In many cases, they’ll have to communicate your innovation efforts to a wider audience. If you make your executives care about innovation and get their support in holding others accountable for its results, then you better believe talk of innovation is going to be greater, and much more actionable, throughout your organization.

It’s hard to keep free-flowing communication open in any area. Fear of ruffling feathers or being the messenger who is shot for bringing bad news is real. We need to get over and move beyond that mindset. Difficult conversations are always more productive than easy ones because they shed light on what really needs to be done to grow. With innovation, there are additional obstacles, as executives may remain skeptical until they can be shown proven results.

So, it’s time to show them.

There’s probably no better way to begin than to appeal to them with the cost of inaction. Tell them about what’s going on out there in the world and how detrimental inaction could be. If your company isn’t investing in employees, developing partnerships, becoming part of the innovation ecosystem, you won’t be able to keep up with competitors and the future won’t look too bright. Just remind them of some of the companies that failed to innovate over the past decade and are now mere talking points of corporate extinction. That said, your communication doesn’t need to focus on gloom and doom alone—show the positive effect that innovation is already having within your organization. And if there’s nothing to show yet, provide insight into those companies that are making innovation central to their operations.

Just as with employees, try your best to avoid the same old boring approaches to communicating with executives. Maybe take a page from Lowe’s, the home improvement retailer. Just like many other companies and organizations out there today getting proactively involved in developing a culture of innovation, Lowe’s created its own innovation lab. When Lowe’s Innovation Labs decided that they needed to double down on communicating the value of innovation to the company’s leadership, they hired a team of science fiction writers, turning their ideas into a comic book. Executives loved it.19

Don’t “go dark”—you must proactively message your status and the value that you are bringing. A regular formal progress report, quarterly or annually, is essential for the visibility of your program. For example, the Innovation Acceleration Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, a nonprofit teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard University, publishes an annual report highlighting innovation projects and their impact.20 The report is done in simple and inspiring language and is accessible to anyone who cares to take a look. If you follow suit, make sure to get these types of reports, featuring actual information, in front of your leaders.

When your teams start hitting those small, measurable milestones, you want that open corridor of communication with the executive leadership to already exist, so you can easily prove that innovation is working. If you can exhibit that goals are being achieved and metrics are being reached, your chances of continued funding are going to improve. When everything doesn’t go as planned, don’t panic. Just as you’re meant to be honest and open with your employees, you need to be the same with executives. Explain where and why you fell short, and what the next steps are to solve the problem. When possible, highlight what’s been learned in the process and where potential pivots could take place.

As communication teams reach out to the employees, they must also do so with the executives and board members too. Everyone should of course be given access to the forums or other inner-office intranet connections so everyone can share their thoughts, successes, and failures around innovation. Companywide meetings and events must keep innovation front and center as well. When executives see methodical execution and real measurable successes, they’ll want more, so they will focus on them and draw attention to them throughout the company. That’s really when the innovation culture begins to develop—when everyone is on the same page and acting together toward reaching common goals. This message needs to be reiterated and dialogues need to carry on to the point that the support and praise of innovation boils over and out into the rest of the world.

Create Dialogue Externally

Just as no one will care about innovation within your company if they don’t know about it, no one outside the company will care about all the progress and steps forward you’ve made if they don’t hear about them. Communication to the rescue. It’s key to work with your PR and marketing groups to take the messages that have been spread throughout your company and get them out to your customers, your current or potential partners, and the public. These messages need to maintain consistency as well, aligning the external with the internal. Also, the two-way conversation doesn’t end in the office; open communication—with an emphasis on listening—needs to remain in full effect in the greater ecosystem as well.

Talk to Your Customers

As discussed, for innovation to succeed, you need to keep lines of communication open with your employees and connect with them through as many avenues as possible. Your customers and partners—or potential customers and partners—are no different. If they know you’re listening and you genuinely care about their feedback, desires, and needs, they will support you that much more. They’ll start to feel like they co-own ideas behind the products and services you’re developing. There are countless opportunities online and offline to develop an “omni-channel” approach to reaching them.

If your PR team stops at a press release about your company’s new “innovation-focused” efforts your customers are likely to entirely miss the “news” and not recognize the actual value it brings them. Meet them where they already are: social media, company-specific message boards, email newsletters, or product review boards. As mentioned earlier, crowdsourcing is an especially effective way of working with customers as well. If applicable, you can of course share metrics, highlighting how your small steps are leading to major results. Transparency is just as dire here as it is within your company, setting customers’ expectations and maintaining morale in the company’s profits, revenue, growth, or sustainability.

Consumers, or citizens in the case of cities, states, and countries, can also be a great resource in deciding where to innovate next. Listen to them in the same way you listen to your employees and take their suggestions seriously. You may need to weed out some less than stellar ideas, but your customers generally know what they want and they’re certainly willing to tell you—just think, there are over 113 million product reviews available on Amazon. With so much data today, you have plenty of opportunities to discover what people really want from certain products and services. You already have many connection points with your existing and prospective customers. Use these opportunities to open up a real dialogue with your customers and show them that their input matters. In the end, you each supply the other with what you’re both looking for. But this two-way street doesn’t end there.

Maintain Open Dialogues with Partners

Customer-centricity is all the rage, and rightfully so, but when it comes to innovation you’re looking at the entire ecosystem, not just pockets of the population. You therefore need to make sure you’re also clearly communicating with your partners, especially in collaborations around innovation, as outlined in the previous chapter. Miscommunication or dropped messages could lead to failed initiatives, resentment, or confusion that could bring any accelerator or incubator to a halt, so remaining open and willing to discuss issues and ideas is imperative.

Keep in mind that co-innovation will take different forms with different partners—startups likely have different goals than universities or city governments, and all of them will have various areas of expertise that you’ll want to speak to. For example, when you are working with a small company just getting off the ground, conversations around investment opportunities and scaling a product or service will be more useful to them than discussing new ways to validate research, which colleges would latch onto. Governments are going to have a greater focus on fixing specific problems for their constituents. No matter who they are and the goals they are trying to achieve, you still need to treat them as equal partners. Just because you think there’s more financial gain in working with a cutting-edge startup, doesn’t mean you should ignore a legacy institution. Be candid with all of them, share your experiences, and show how innovation efforts are transforming your company.

Just as your communications team members consistently stay on message with your employees and customers, you need to do the same with your partners. Show them the value that you’re bringing to the table by providing real-life examples of what your company is accomplishing. Since you’re going to be working with many groups (some that may come from a variety of different backgrounds), a consistent, clear message also builds your reputation and will help you overcome cultural and language barriers. Work with your communications team to create a document that your entire company can use to explain what you’re all about, where you’re headed, and where you’re looking to collaborate in the greater innovation ecosystem. Not only does this create clarity, but it can also be used as a tool to attract potential and new partners.

You’ll learn a lot from employees and customers, but you’re likely to learn even more from these partners, lessons that you can return with to implement in your own organization. Just as much as we partner with others to help them, we also do so to create greater knowledge of our own that we can share internally and use to further our innovation transformation. Listening is therefore paramount—without it, no true communication can occur, which means innovation comes to a halt.

Case Study: Instant Pot

Everyone’s in a rush these days. With the speed of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we’ve all tried to keep up, finding innovative new ways to save time and maximize what’s most important to us, whether work, hobbies, or family. In a way, that’s not much different than what people have always done. Take cooking. The microwave—invented in the 1940s—basically automated home cooking and vastly changed how people made and ate food.21 Much earlier, literally hundreds of years, French physicist Denis Papin took the first stab at a pressure cooker, or what he called the “Steam Digester,” in 1679 to speed up the cooking process.22 But it took a former engineer from Nortel, a major Canadian telecom networking company that filed for bankruptcy in 2009, to bring a revamped version of the product into the twenty-first century.

Called the “Internet’s most viral pressure cooker,” the Instant Pot was developed by Robert Wang in 2008.23 Both he and his wife were working full time and, like most of us caught up in the rat race, found that come the end of the day, cooking a full meal, especially a healthy one for their two kids, could prove to be a major challenge. With his engineering experience in hand, he started working on a new product, a much-improved version of Papin’s seventeenth-century venture. He brought on some fellow telecom engineers and invested $300,000 in development, and within 18 months the first-generation version of the product was born.24 Part pressure cooker, part crockpot, part rice cooker, part just about anything you could think of for your culinary prep needs, the Instant Pot uses a microprocessor and thermal and pressure sensor technology so you can cook meals of all kinds with little effort and time.

Wang didn’t just come up with the R2D2-looking time saver by hanging around his kitchen and experimenting with his engineering buddies. Like any good innovator, he realized the importance of listening to his prospective customers’ concerns and feedback. Some fretted about space in an overcrowded kitchen, others worried about burning their family’s meal to a crisp.25 The small size and burn protection mechanism of the Instant Pot spoke to both of these potential issues. The product started with five functions, but some models now have up to ten, alleviating the need for many of the pots, pans, and cooking utensils that quickly take up shelf space and throw cupboards into total disarray.

The Instant Pot itself might be considered ingenious, but Wang’s approach to selling it and communicating its value, getting out the word of his innovative new product, created the greatest impact in the public’s adoption. He first tried a more traditional route, pitching samples of the device to retailers and at home goods conventions—the response was tepid at best. So he turned to Amazon, quickly realizing that the customer reviews would be vital to selling the Instant Pot and growing a community by word of mouth. In 2017, he claimed to have read 40,000 reviews (talk about engagement!) and he continues to review them religiously.26

Wang then began sending Instant Pots to influencers and bloggers, which quickly paid off as well. He also set up a Facebook page to better engage with actual end users of the product. Understanding that meals are social, and people love sharing pictures of their food, he realized social media was the best place to build that word-of-mouth marketing strategy. Through both Amazon and Facebook, he has received suggestions and positive and negative feedback that he has taken into account on subsequent iterations to improve the Instant Pot, and in the process, he’s gained a larger customer base.

Wang’s bold mission is to now put an Instant Pot in every kitchen, and he may just reach this goal one day. If you google Instant Pot, almost 27 million results pop up—not bad for a product that didn’t hit the shelves until 2010. Instant Pot also became bigger than the product itself, maybe even bigger than the brand. It’s a style of cooking that has garnered a cult-like, rabid following, with numerous cookbooks and social media sites sharing recipes and cooking advice. By listening to his audience, incorporating their ideas, and getting his product out into the world, Wang communicated his innovation’s values, garnered evangelists and brand ambassadors, and actually helped solve a common problem that consumers faced. Without clear communication, he wouldn’t have been able to get the product off the ground in the first place, and without consistent communication, he’d never be able to keep innovating as he has.

Summary: Discover, Listen, Act

If communication doesn’t take place, then nothing gets accomplished. Without actually researching the market and communicating with your potential customers, employees, and other stakeholders, you’ll never know what problems you can solve for them to begin with. In essence, innovation rarely happens without active listening. And listening leads to clear, honest communication, the kind that is necessary both within your company and externally—you want the world to know how and why your company is innovative and what you’re doing to push innovation forward. It’s really all about value: If no one knows what you’re doing, then they won’t care, and if they don’t care, then they certainly won’t see any value in your work or accomplishments. Whether getting executive buy in, attracting talent and new customers, growing relationships with partners, or connecting with your employees, the strategy is essentially the same: develop constructive two-way communication not only to show innovation but to enable it as well.

Employee communications, PR, and marketing play a unique role here, one that no one else can take on with the same impact. They’re specially set up to facilitate communication, so as long as they see innovation and its effects as important to your organization, they’ll be willing to support it throughout the greater ecosystem as well. Even more importantly, their internal focus is absolutely necessary to developing a true culture of innovation. And that’s really what all of these innovation principles are leading us to—a new way to organize a team, a company, or an environment around innovation, helping us to create the best companies and organizations possible and become the best people we can be.

Notes

  1. 1  Ida Eikvag Groth and Vibeke Hayden, “How Norway Disrupted Sushi,” Implement Consulting Group, November 2015, https://implementconsultinggroup.com/how-norway-disrupted-sushi/.
  2. 2  Ibid.
  3. 3  Jacob Goldstein, “Episode 651: The Salmon Taboo,” NPR: Planet Money, June 5, 2019, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=729396914.
  4. 4  Groth and Hayden, “How Norway Disrupted Sushi.”
  5. 5  Goldstein, “Episode 651.”
  6. 6  Ibid.
  7. 7  Ibid.
  8. 8  Oeystein Sollesnes, “The Norwegian Campaign behind Japan’s Love of Salmon Sushi,” Japan Times, March 10, 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/03/10/food/norwegian-campaign-behind-japans-love-salmon-sushi/#.XSkVDJNKjL8.
  9. 9  Ibid.
  10. 10 https://www.statista.com/statistics/456500/daily-number-of-e-mails-worldwide/.
  11. 11 Natalie Thaïs Uomini and Georg Friedrich Meyer, “Shared Brain Lateralization Patterns in Language and Acheulean Stone Tool Production: A Functional Transcranial Doppler Ultrasound Study,” PLOS ONE, August 30, 2013.
  12. 12 David Witt, “Only 14% of Employees Understand Their Company’s Strategy and Direction,” Blanchard LeaderChat, May 21, 2012, https://leaderchat.org/2012/05/21/only-14-of-employ ees-understand-their-companys-strategy-and-direction/.
  13. 13 Natalie Eisele, “Make Sure Every Worker Knows Your Company’s Mission,” Business 2 Community, April 2, 2018, https://www.business2community.com/human-resources/make-sure-every-worker-knows-companys-mission-02040790.
  14. 14 Emma Charlton, “These are the 10 Most In-demand Skills of 2019, According to LinkedIn,” World Economic Forum, January 14, 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/the-hard-and-soft-skills-to-futureproof-your-career-according-to-linkedin/.
  15. 15 Melissa Kivett, “Why Insurance Firm Assurant Designed a Strategy Game for Employees to Play,” Innovation Leader, February 24, 2016, https://www.innovationleader.com/why-insurance-firm-assurant-designed-a-strategy-game-for-employees-to-play/.
  16. 16 Tim Eisenhauer, “Why Lack of Communication Has Become the Number One Reason People Quit,” The Next Web, November 8, 2015, https://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/11/08/why-lack-of-communication-has-become-the-number-one-reason-people-quit/.
  17. 17 Cary Burch, “How a Video Series Is Spreading Innovation at Thomson Reuters,” Innovation Leader, November 13, 2014, https://www.innovationleader.com/how-an-internal-video-series-is-spreading-innovation-at-thomson-reuters/.
  18. 18 Lisa Quast, “Four Ways to Help Your Employees Understand How They Contribute To The Company’s Bottom Line,” Forbes, December 19, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2016/12/19/four-ways-to-help-your-employees-understand-how-they-contribute-to-the-companys-bottom-line.
  19. 19 Corinne Ruff, “Why Lowe’s Uses Comic Books to Guide Innovation,” Retail Dive, October 5, 2017, https://www.retaildive.com/news/why-lowes-uses-comic-books-to-guide-innovation/506504/.
  20. 20 Naomi Fried, “Naomi Fried: My 3 Highest-impact Programs,” Innovation Leader, September 14, 2013, https://www.innovationleader.com/naomi-fried-my-3-highest-impact-programs/.
  21. 21 Matt Blitz, “The Amazing True Story of How the Microwave Was Invented by Accident,” Popular Mechanics, February 24, 2016, https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a19567/how-the-microwave-was-invented-by-accident/.
  22. 22 Discover Pressure Cooking, “The History of Pressure Cooking,” discoverpressurecooking.com, 2019, http://www.discoverpressurecooking.com/history.html.
  23. 23 Arturo Chang, “Former Nortel Engineer Behind Viral ‘Instant Pot,’” BNN Bloomberg, March 17, 2017, https://www.bnn bloomberg.ca/former-nortel-engineer-behind-viral-instant-pot-1.698935.
  24. 24 Margaret Rhodes, “Fired from His Own Startup, This Founder Invented Amazon’s Hit Product of 2016,” Inc., June 2017, https://www.inc.com/magazine/201706/margaret-rhodes/double-insight-instant-cooking-pot-design-awards-2017.html.
  25. 25 Tom Huddleston Jr., “How Instant Pot Became a Kitchen Appliance with a Cult Following and a Best-seller on Amazon,” CNBC: Make It, November 26, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/how-instant-pot-became-a-kitchen-appliance-with-a-cult-following.html.
  26. 26 Ibid.
..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset