with Ulrich Irnich & Markus Kuckertz

Shownotes

Episode 40 looks at employee entrepreneurship and why it is important to recognise that the idea is not at the centre of innovation. Our guest is Ahi Gvirtsman, co-founder and chief knowledge officer at Spyre Group, an international innovation and ecosystem design consulting firm.

Ahi’s expertise is in empowering management teams with the insights and tools they need for innovation success and cross-functional collaboration. Having worked with Ahi and his team, Uli and Markus can draw on their own experience.

Uli, Markus and Ahi discuss innovation as a strategic management process rather than an ideational event. Ahi emphasises that a tailor-made infrastructure and an entrepreneurial process are the basis for marketable innovations. The lively discussion highlights the importance of managers thinking like investors and employees acting like entrepreneurs.

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Contributors – Hosts: Ulrich Irnich & Markus Kuckertz // Production: Daniel Sprügel, Maniac Studios (https://maniacstudios.com/) // Editorial: Marcus Pawlik © Digital Pacemaker Podcast 2023

Zusammenfassung

In this episode, I chat with Ahi Gürzmann, co-founder and chief knowledge officer of Spire Group, a consulting firm that specializes in innovation and ecosystem design. Our conversation delves into the critical role of employee entrepreneurship in fostering innovation within organizations. Ahi argues that innovation should not be an empty buzzword, but rather a serious undertaking that propels companies toward remarkable outcomes. He makes it clear that successful organizations view innovation as an ongoing management-led project, greatly contrasting those who treat it as a one-time event.

Ahi shares his rich background in innovation within major corporations, including his tenure at HP, where despite facing various challenges, he remained focused on finding effective solutions. His experiences have imprinted upon him a conviction that innovation is not merely about sparking ideas, but about transforming those ideas into processes that yield real results. We discuss the strategic importance of establishing a structured infrastructure that facilitates continual innovation, and Ahi emphasizes the need for management engagement, measurable activities, and an entrepreneurial approach.

The episode takes a personal turn as Ahi recounts how his passion for baking led him to earn a pastry diploma from Le Cordon Bleu. This experience surprisingly influenced his approach to innovation management by instilling in him a meticulous attention to detail and a structured methodology. We touch on how this systematic approach can form the backbone of successful innovation processes in corporate settings.

In our dialogue, we explore the inherent challenges that larger organizations face when attempting to innovate. Ahi points out that embracing diversity within teams can lead to more vantage points, enriching innovation initiatives. We discuss real-world examples where insights from various locales and backgrounds led to breakthrough ideas that could tap into new markets, emphasizing that diversity expands opportunities for growth.

Ahi stresses that successful innovation relies on collaboration and connection within teams, whereby expertise is leveraged effectively. He shares strategies for aspiring corporate innovators on how to validate ideas and present compelling cases to decision-makers without overwhelming them. We also touch on the crucial balance between nurturing current business operations while investing in future growth through innovation.

As we near the end of our fruitful conversation, Ahi articulates his insights on what keeps him motivated. He advocates for a disciplined approach to managing creative processes, likening it to “managed chaos,” where clear structures exist to encourage innovation.

This episode is a treasure trove of insights for leaders looking to foster innovation within their organizations. It challenges the common perceptions of what innovation should look like and encourages a mindset that embraces ongoing learning, collaboration, and strategic management. Ahi’s blend of personal anecdotes, professional insights, and actionable advice promises to inspire listeners to rethink their approach to innovation in the workplace.

Transkript

Speaker0:[0:00] A company is not innovating to say we’re innovative. At least it shouldn’t. I see some companies that do it this way. I don’t think it’s the right way. You should innovate because it takes you to amazing places. Innovation is serious business. That’s the main point that differentiates the successful companies from the ones that are less successful.

Music:[0:18] Music

Speaker0:[0:32] Welcome back to the Digital Pacemaker Podcast with your hosts, Uli Oehnig, and with me, Markus Kockertz. Today, we talk about employee entrepreneurship and innovation. Our guest is Ahi Gürzmann, co-founder and chief knowledge officer at Spire Group, an international innovation and ecosystem design consulting company. Great to have you with us today, Ahi. Thank you, Markus. It’s great to be here. Ahi’s expertise is in empowering management teams with the insights and tools they need for innovation, success and cross-functional collaboration. Having worked with Ahi and his team, Uli and I can draw on our own experience. Uli and I have already had the opportunity to work with Ahi on our innovation skills and we are able to share our experiences today. And Uli, I would like to welcome you as well. The start of your career was at the Jülich Research Center in Germany. I know that you have told that story a lot. And what would be interesting for me or for us, what role have entrepreneurship and innovation played in your professional journey?

Speaker1:[1:33] A big one. As you can imagine, entrepreneurship is always taking accountability, taking especially already a perspective on the next steps, right? And entrepreneur means get things done. And everybody who feels gets things done is already very close to entrepreneurship. I remember that like yesterday, when I started my career at the Nuclear Research Center in Jürich, the big challenge ahead of us was, especially in that area, the Institute bought two machines, one from ABB and one from Siemens, and they spent a fortune on these both machines. But both machines together are not working. Then the normal situation starts. The both companies blame each other because their system works, right? And my science colleagues, they said, well, yeah, I understand that, but we want to start to find new ferromagnetic thin films to help the IT industry to find new storage capacities, and we need to get this thing going. That was my task, to get that going. And therefore, entrepreneurship is, I would say, deeply in my heart, deeply in my heart. And yeah, I’m so happy, Ahi, that you are together with us today. And I would like to welcome you firstly, to give a spotlight on you. So welcome, Ahi, also from my side. Ahi founded Spire Group in autumn 2018.

Speaker1:[3:02] With two co-founders. Previously, Ahi spent many years in various innovation leadership roles in software and IT companies, including HP. And I know HP made also a big transformation. We can talk later a bit of that. Ahi is also an author of the Peak Innovation Principles and holds a degree of computer science from Technion Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA in Information System and Operating Management from Tel Aviv University. Now, Ahi, it’s a pleasure to have you here with us. And, you know, normally I would like to ask you the question, when you’re looking back at your career, what were the most exciting, for you exciting, right, innovation moments?

Speaker0:[3:49] So, you know, when I think about it, my experience started with being an entrepreneur inside the corporation. When I joined HP, the first thing that I found myself doing is trying to change things that were very difficult wherever I was present. I was involved in the attempts to introduce new and exciting premium enhancements to existing products, some of which were pretty veteran products, I would say, 20-year-old, 30-year-old products. And I have the scars on my back to show how hard that was because I kept failing at trying to do that. Sometimes the failure was outright, and sometimes it was kind of slow death and gradual. And at some point I said to myself, this doesn’t really make sense to me. I don’t understand why I and my colleagues were also, I thought that they were very talented and very professional. And I saw them failing too, trying to introduce their own innovations. So I said, I want to change that. I want to solve this riddle. I like solving hard problems. So I said, I want to be, I want to run innovation in the company and that kind of, set me on a path of trying to see how to make established organization proficient at innovation. In other words, doing things that are outside their comfort zone.

Speaker0:[5:07] Right? Doing stuff that is not the normal for them. And I think that the second one was, I had this, we’re talking about corporate employee entrepreneurship, was when after running the program, the innovation program that I founded at HP Software for one year, I was at an event where one of the entrepreneurs, one of the employees from Shanghai, China, was telling his story about a project that he promoted and he got it to a pretty advanced stage, but then it was canceled for the right reasons. And he was kind of telling his story and his entire presentation consisted of wedding photographs.

Speaker0:[5:41] And he was telling a personal story. I see, I get emotional every time I tell this story. He was telling a story of how going through this experience of becoming an entrepreneur turned him from a technical, what was the word he used? It was like a nerd, a technical nerd, into somebody who is a lot more optimistic about what he can achieve in life. And it gave him the confidence to reach out to a woman he was interested in. And he got her to go out on a date with him. And he showed her a video of him presenting his idea of pitching, you know, just like the IT accelerator. He showed her the video and she told him, wow, innovation makes you sexy. And they got married. So to me, that was an amazing moment because I realized that innovation in established organizations, yes, the outcomes are profound. They impact the business, they impact the strategy. But on the way, you touch people’s lives and you change them. You make them grow. And the cerebral part of me is excited about the business outcomes. My heart, every time I get up in the morning, this is what drives me. We change people’s lives. I see it every day in each of our clients. And that was a really significant moment for me.

Speaker1:[6:51] I can totally imagine that. And, you know, everybody who is listening, you feel the energy in his voice, right? And that’s where purpose comes to life, right? Because if you find your purpose, this is exactly what you’re feeling. And that’s also what you’re demonstrating. Now, a different question, Ahi, because if I study your CV very carefully, I also stuck my eyes on the point that you got a pastry diploma at Le Cordon Bleu. please share what happened there.

Speaker0:[7:23] You’re going to the personal angle immediately. My background is software. And I studied software in the university and I worked in the software industry for some time. And then before committing totally to high tech career, I said, I have this hobby that I love very much, which is to bake. And I said, I want to take a year off before making the ultimate decision about my career and test the waters to see whether this would work for me as a profession. And it was a life-changing experience, spending a year in Paris, studying at the Cordon Bleu. Everybody now hates me who’s listening to the podcast, I know.

Speaker0:[8:02] But I read the book, The Alchemist, and it talks about, you know, that it’s okay to go on your journey. A treasure will wait for you. So I took that year off and I love baking until today. I don’t bake cakes so much anymore because I need to stay in shape. I do have an obsession with sourdough breads and pizza and stuff like that. So my kids are enjoying it very much. And once in a while, I recreate some of the stuff that I learned there so that they can be happy with a bit of sugar. But what it taught me, by the way, is to be systematic. One of the things that was amazing for me, it was new for me. I never encountered something like that before, was to see people who are so meticulous because pastry is not like cooking. Pastry is science. You can’t deviate by 25% in the quantities. You can’t just play around with the techniques without understanding what you’re doing. So when you work with the teachers… They are so meticulous about every little detail. So for me, that was a really significant experience because I took that. You know, today, I think you also can see that when we work with the teams and when we run the accelerator, there are very, very exact rules of what needs to happen at each stage of the process. And everything is very, very well structured. And I think that is something that I took from my time at the Cordon Bleu.

Speaker1:[9:23] Thank you very much for sharing that, Ahi. I think most of our listeners maybe already explore in their mind how can that work. But now, Markus, back to you.

Speaker0:[9:34] Yeah, I know, Uli, that cooking is a passion for you as well. So maybe we should think about a special episode about cooking. And Ai, we will re-invite you and we will definitely have that separately. That conversation might be a good idea. But Ai, we have obviously engaged with you before. And I would like to summarize your thesis in my words. So you say innovation is a strategic management process and not a conceptional event. Secondly, a tailor-made infrastructure and an entrepreneurial process are the basis for marketable innovations. And lastly, you say managers who think like investors and employees who act like entrepreneurs make the difference. So it’s definitely about the mindset. So if we come to the first topic, Ahi, you have accompanied so many companies through the innovation processes. In your experience, what distinguishes the successful innovators from the less successful ones?

Speaker0:[10:25] I think that the successful ones is very, very clear. They look at this as an ongoing management-led project. This is not something that people do one time for engagement and fun. When I see companies that are focused so much on discovering the best startup or coming up with the best idea, I know that it’s not enough. It’s just the front end, to use the software term. It has to be something that is profound. there has to be infrastructure. There has to be an engaged management team. There has to be an infrastructure of a process of tools and skills. There has to be constant measurement and improvement.

Speaker0:[11:07] Innovation is a means to an end. It’s not an end in itself, right? It’s like this amazing tool that managers have to go where they want to go strategically, but in huge leaps and bounds, instead of incrementally or not going there at all and just fantasizing about it. It really is a game changer, but it has to be addressed as such. A company is not innovating to say we’re innovative. At least it shouldn’t. I see some companies that do it this way. I don’t think it’s the right way. You should innovate because it takes you to amazing places. And I think that’s the main difference. When people regard innovation as a serious business, as a means to an end, just like they would regard any other business endeavor, and not just as something that you do for fun and just for culture. That is not the recommended approach. The recommended approach is to look at it as serious business. You know, we have sayings at Spire that we call Spire-isms. So one of my Spire-isms is that innovation managers that don’t measure their activities will always be sitting at the kiddie table. They will never be considered seriously. They will be that crazy person, you know, with all the crazy ideas or has a lot of connections in the ecosystem, brings a lot of startups, has all these crazy notions and ideas, but they will never be taken seriously. Innovation is serious business. That’s the main point that differentiates the successful companies from the ones that are less successful.

Speaker0:[12:31] Is there something special you observe in maybe larger companies like we are, for example, or multinational companies? So, you know, it’s funny because when you think multinational, you think it’s going to be harder. But I have to tell you that the more people you have in more geographies with more perspectives and different life experiences, the bigger the diversity. And I’m using the word diversity very, very precisely here. It’s diversity of experience, diversity of perspective, sometimes of culture. Bring people together and you give them something exciting to work on together. And you give them a specific role in the team. And you give the team a real achievable target that excites them, brings the best in people. So you have more opinions. It’s like every employee is a censor, right? And you have different markets. So somebody in Asia sees an opportunity that doesn’t exist in UK or in Holland, and it’s an opportunity that is significant enough to make it worthwhile to chase it, right? So for example, I have one of my clients, there was an opportunity that had to do with what is called reverse innovation. So they sell a certain product to customers of a certain size and higher. Somebody came and said, I want to sell our most basic kit that we manufacture in the most basic level of production to people who have just a family business. Okay.

Speaker0:[13:57] And there are hundreds of millions of those in Africa and in Asia. And it’s somebody who was familiar with the market in Africa. And it wouldn’t have come to life if this person didn’t have this perspective and understood the concept of innovation and had a process to take that idea forward and actually develop it.

Speaker0:[14:16] So to your question, the more people involved, the more intellects potentially jump into the fray. And you have so many more perspectives to complement each other and opportunities globally that I think it just makes it better.

Speaker1:[14:31] And that’s, Ahi, that’s triggered something with me because especially diversity is a big part for me. And it’s regardless how big the company is, right? It gives the different perspective. And especially if you think about inclusion, right? And you want to address products which address inclusion, you need to have this kind of diversity as well because otherwise you are just continuing what you have ever done. Come on, then you should not wonder if the outcome is not what you expect. Therefore, diversity, I totally agree with you, is a big ingredient in innovation.

Speaker0:[15:10] Yeah, and I also think it’s a great equalizer. When you run a program like this inside a corporation, One of my experiences from HP was that I don’t want to name specific countries, but one of the countries we worked with is a country that is quite, you know, the women’s role is not usually, it’s not equal to the men. And in that particular site, in that particular country, we had quite a few teams of women driving the most successful projects and they got the opportunity because it’s open to everyone. And that was also really exciting for me. In your second thesis, you talked about a tailor-made infrastructure and an entrepreneurial process. Can you explain how that must support the innovation process? You know, as I said before, in order for innovation to be successful.

Speaker0:[15:57] You have to look at it as a serious business and every serious activity inside the corporation as a structure. It has a process with stages. you decide what are the conditions under which something moves from stage to stage in the process. You allocate funding to run that process and you measure it. You measure the process. The thing about innovation is that you need to look at this process as a funnel. So I really like to model what VCs, venture capital firms do. You look at the funnel and you see they look at startups. They evaluate startups on an ongoing basis. And they see a startup they like, but the startup is very, very young. So they say, you know, we’re going to give you a little bit of funding. We want you to go out, create a value proposition and bring three customers that say, if you build a product, we’ll pay you. Maybe you show, you give them a prototype or something. And if you bring that, we’ll give you another round of funding so you can build your MVP. They get enough to build an MVP, and now the condition is, I want three paying customers, come back, I’ll fund you to do the first step of scale, and so on. So we want to recreate that inside the corporation.

Speaker0:[17:14] Okay, so what we’re saying is, it is a process. The further along you are in the process, the more funding and work time we will allocate for you as a management. But the smaller the number of ventures that are going to survive, right? So overall, when you do the multiplications, overall, you can manage the funding of the process. You can say, I’m willing to allocate funding for, let’s say, 10 LVPs every year. I’m willing to allocate funding for three deployments every year. So I know what is the budgetary framework for this entire operation. And that handles the first objection that management has instinctively to innovation, which is, oh my God, how much is this going to cost? Oh my God, how much disruption this is going to introduce and so much mess. And it’s going to divert the attention of the management team from all the day-to-day stuff that they need to take care of. So what we’re saying is, no, no, no. this is a very serious process. It’s controlled. It’s budgeted. It’s transparent. US management have full control of what’s happening in the process.

Speaker0:[18:20] And the conditions are set. And it’s not going to take too much time of executives. It’s not going to take too much time of the team because we can tell you exactly how many teams are going to be in each stage, how much time each team is going to be requested to invest in that stage. So that is the first part of the infrastructure. The second part of the infrastructure is the supporting network. The entrepreneurs by themselves, they are the fuel.

Speaker0:[18:47] But they’re not enough because you need a supporting cast. You have experts around your organization. You have people who have complementary skill sets, right? They have knowledge in some subject matter expertise. For example, I had somebody who was from a finance team in a global corporation who had an idea. We sell a product in one layer. We can sell it in multiple layers and it’s going to be in the same surface area, but customers will be able to use more of their surface area and pay us more for the additional layers. And he had a great spreadsheet and I asked him, are you an engineer? He said, no.

Speaker0:[19:27] Have you ever met a customer? He said, no. I just had this concept in my mind. I’m a finance guy. I can build a spreadsheet. I said, fantastic. So now I want you to connect to somebody from sales and I want you to connect to somebody from professional services. And the innovation team enables that. In some companies, you have a directory where you enter the skill and it gives you a name. And that person knows that from time to time, people are going to contact him and ask him about his area of expertise for the purpose of the innovation program. In this particular case, the innovation team made the connection and he found out that the professional service guy thought about the exact same idea three years prior. There was a technical element that was missing. But now that he reminded at him of the idea. He said, oh, this technical element, I know I’m thinking about the fact that now it’s available. So it kind of made the idea born again. So this network of knowledge and support is something that can be fostered and created. And that’s the second part of the infrastructure. And the third one is connecting the decision makers. The decision makers are the internal customers of this infrastructure. And if it’s not connected in the right points to the decision makers, you’re in full gas, but in neutral.

Speaker0:[20:40] You’re doing a lot of RPMs, but you’re not going anywhere. You have to connect it to the decision makers because that will make the entire activity purposeful. It will have outcomes that you can actually bring into the work plans. When we work, when Spire Group works with a client, success as we see it is deployments as part of the official work plans and then impact on the business. That’s what success looks like to us. And for that, you have to have the three elements. You need the process, you need the supporting network, and you need the decision makers who are connected to the entire activity and are ideally they’re your partners. It’s their infrastructure. It’s their tool. That’s what you want to strive for.

Speaker1:[21:22] Now, it sounds very, very simple and very easy to do, right? But I guess in real life, it’s a bit more complicated, right? Because I can imagine that some of the elements are often forgotten. Or if you have a bright idea, you have no access to a network which can help you. Or you don’t have the discipline to execute as you described. What is your advice, especially if you have a bright idea, if you are on the innovation side to help this kind of people to get their things up to life?

Speaker0:[21:56] I think there are two aspects of this. The first one is the intellectual and the second one is the emotional. So intellectually speaking, if you are an employee in a corporation or an established organization and you have an idea that you feel is innovative and you want to promote it, What I would say is, first of all, you need to find who is the decision maker, who is the key person to persuade. Because, you know, you have a large management team. Someone in the management team has the resources and the budget and the authority to allocate them in order to make your idea a reality. Who is this person? First of all, so you’re not shouting into the wind. You know exactly precisely who to go to. Then you need to get access to this person. And sometimes that’s hard. Not all executives are available like you are, Uli.

Speaker0:[22:46] I know that you are very supportive of innovation in your organization. Not all executives are like you. So sometimes we have to realize that, hey, not every idea can be implemented in every organization in every period of time. You need to be honest with yourself. So can you get access to this executive? And if you can, you need to build a narrative. So what we do at Spire, we use a model that’s very similar to Lean Startup, but it has been adapted to established organizations. If you don’t have access to our material, use the Lean Startup approach. There’s a great book called Running Lean by Ash Moria, talks about the Lean Canvas tool, use that, document your assumptions, and then validate.

Speaker0:[23:29] Validate them, get out of the office, collect information. And the key that I like to emphasize for entrepreneurs, tell managers something that they don’t already know. That will position you as an interesting person that they would want to invest in. Just like VCs, sometimes they don’t invest in an idea, they invest in a person. If you are persuasive, and if you bring evidence and facts that management is not already familiar with, you will get their attention and you will get a chance to prove that you’re right with a little bit of funding and a little bit of time. And that’s the last thing. Ask for something that they can give you easily. Don’t come in and say, fund my product. It’s going to take 12 months to develop and a team of 20 people based on my presentation. That’s not going to happen. Learn what the concept of MVP means and ask for something that you can do quickly and cheaply. It’s not necessarily a prototype. It’s not necessarily the classic MVP.

Speaker0:[24:27] Build something that will prove that you’re right. We call this at Spire, we call it funded validation. So beyond getting out of the office and collecting information, now you come to management and say, look, these are my assumptions. This is the evidence and data that I have, which I believe makes me right. Now what I’m asking is I want to prove that I’m right a little more. It’s not the product yet, but something a little more. I need a little bit of funding, a little bit of time. I’ll do something that will make you believe that I’m right if I’m able to demonstrate success, and that will justify investing in the first version of my project. So that is kind of the intellectual side. On the emotional side.

Speaker0:[25:08] I like to listen more to the innovation leaders in organizations. If an executive is listening to this and asking himself or herself, how can I take the first step? Or an innovation manager is just starting and wants to know, how do I get the organization to cooperate. So I like to use the analogy of, let’s say that we’re talking about doing an Ironman triathlon in the deserts of Arizona in six months. It’s really intimidating. It’s a big, big thing, right? How do I do this? I mean, if I do it and I’m not prepared, it can actually, I can get injured, right? So, you know, failing in an established organization can be bad for your career.

Speaker0:[25:46] People like to say that it’s good to fail, fail fast, fail forward. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t buy that. If your career is tied to an organization, it’s not good to fail. It’s good to fail in an environment that gives you the permission to fail, which is what we do in organizations. So what I say is, if you told me that you want to do an Ironman, I would say, okay, let’s start maybe with a half marathon, okay? So take the sneakers that you already have in the closet, your old beat up sneakers, put them on your feet, get out of the house and start walking. Let’s say that you’re overweight, okay? You’re out of shape. Get out of the house, start walking. Next day, walk for two blocks. Next day, start jogging. So start doing things, right? Start doing the innovative stuff. Read the material. You can read my book. You know, you can read what we have on our website. We release a lot of articles and material on this. When you prepare for an Ironman, the best thing to do is to find a guide.

Speaker0:[26:40] You know, somebody who has done the marathon, the Ironman, who prepared others, who completed the Ironman successfully, and that way you can make it work. But I think that it’s an emotional barrier oftentimes. People are afraid. What will happen if people don’t like my idea? What happens if I want to drive innovation and people don’t cooperate with me? So there are ways to start small and modest and generate momentum gradually. So that is how I would get over the emotional part. Really maybe observations to bring it to our reality or back to our reality for the things Ahi said. So in larger companies like ours, there are really good times where you have growth, where you have success, where people have time and passion actually to go the extra mile for their innovation topics, where it’s actually not that hard to get funds for the things you want to do. But there are also times that are bad, where performance goes down, where you might actually need innovation the most, but where it is quite hard actually to get the capacity or the funding for your extra topics that don’t belong to the core things you have to do. So everybody is focused on utilizing the capacity that you still have on doing the turnaround. What can you do as a leader, actually, that you don’t lose the track on innovation and that you still empower people to go the extra mile to do the innovation things?

Speaker1:[28:04] Yeah, that’s a good question, Markus. And, you know, you need always both. You need to concentrate on your core business which generates money and you know if you look at your established core business they are generating a lot of money don’t get that out of your view on the other side don’t screw down your future because this kind of innovation you need to get new revenue pools in such kind of times where times get hard the normal reaction is flip everything back and just focusing on the things you are doing. Yeah, you can do that, but you need to balance, right? You need, as Ahi said, you need also to invest into your future. You need to get people believing in your future. If you optimize your existing stuff that is good and that helps, right, generating cash,

Speaker1:[28:55] Tick the box. But that doesn’t excite people, because it’s the thing they did the last 10 years, the last decades. If you want to excite people, you need to balance that. Now, the important thing, especially in that kind of hard times, is to select the ones you want to bet on, and making small MVPs to demonstrate that value is generated. I think there is a, I would say, misunderstanding sometimes that innovation is some kind of hobby it is not it is like ah he said it has to generate value and you know for me always innovation say show me the money so show me how it links to value you are creating and if you have a good answer on that regardless in which times you are people will invest into that they invest into two things number one into the idea which generates value and if you can prove with your MVPs that the value is coming and the second thing they invest in you to say I believe in you that you can do that and therefore I like your analogy and storytelling is so important on that you need to get it into the point what you really want to achieve and then you have discipline in executing it because the trust is coming with the execution and the ability to execute I saw so many innovation projects with bright ideas, they failed in execution.

Speaker1:[30:22] And if you don’t deliver on execution, nobody believes anymore in your idea. I think that’s the thing you need to balance.

Speaker0:[30:30] It’s so much about mindset because one of the things that we try to educate organizations on, and it’s usually we need to do it in the beginning and then they understand and they get into the right mindset, is that innovation projects are not a three-year plan. You know, when you work in large corporations and established organizations, government and so on, people think, you know, the moment I get into a three-year plan, I won. I got into the three-year plan. No, you probably lost because now your idea has been fixed. Your project has been fixed and it’s all about execution. But the entrepreneurial mindset is about seeking value. You know, when we mentor the teams, we always talk about Pareto’s Law. We say, instead of trying to generate this value in one shot as one project, which will be a three-year project, find the 20% of the problem that you’re solving that causes 80% of the pain. If you solve just that, it will probably simplify the project immensely, allow you to go to market much faster.

Speaker0:[31:32] Decrease the investment significantly, the initial investment, and allow you to prove that you are generating value, revenues, or maybe cost saving, and start generating momentum. That’s the execution that you’re talking about, Uli. Because usually when people fail on execution, it’s because it’s just taking too much time. And they’re trying to solve the entire thing, because they’re thinking like engineers. I want them to think like entrepreneurs. They start focused. And then if they’re successful, they generate momentum and they start expanding. That’s the entrepreneurial approach. So one more thing, what you say about hard times, I would love it if all executives thought like you and acted like what you said. Unfortunately, I have to say that most executive teams don’t do that. But what I do recommend is if you are during a more difficult period, you can definitely use innovation for becoming more efficient, for operational efficiency. I have clients that right now are focused on increasing their productivity using startup technology, open innovation with startup technology. That’s their focus. That’s perfectly fine because that will introduce the culture of entrepreneurship into the organization. And then when they’re ready and when they have faith in the system and the process, they will want also to grow the business.

Speaker1:[32:50] And I would add on that, you need also to have the boldness to understand when your idea was great, but the problem you try to solve has no market and no customers. Then you need to step back and say, okay, we learn from what we have done, right, on our MVP, that maybe the market is not there or the problem we want to address adds no value to our customers. We want to address it. And stepping back and stopping things, you know, it’s easy set. If you are in full emotion, I take your words, in full emotion and passion on your ideas and stepping back and say, no, we are the point where we have to take a conscious decision. That’s the tough part.

Speaker0:[33:33] And I think that what I could say what I really like or love about the way that we build this infrastructure is that it’s easy to say, okay, we failed, but it’s a good failure. It’s a learning. It’s not really a failure because it was done in a safe environment where it’s safe to fail. Failing in this environment is good for your career because you learn, you show value, you were able to present yourself as an employee, you’re able to present yourself in a very dignified way, an ambitious way to your management team, to your colleagues, go through a growing experience. It’s much easier for management to look and say, okay, you know, we like this idea, we like this venture, this one we don’t think has value. And usually what will happen is that the entrepreneur team itself will present to management and say, you know, we did all this activity, we collected all of this evidence, actually, we haven’t been able to prove our thesis. So we don’t recommend to proceed. And that’s perfectly okay, because now we’re making decisions based on facts and evidence, and not based on politics and wishful thinking, which is usually what happens, I’m sorry to say, in large organizations where they make decisions about large projects. Thank you very much for the exciting exchange. And like always at this stage, we ask, what do you take away from our discussion? What are your learnings?

Speaker1:[34:53] You know, I learn always in the interaction and that’s really great, right? Let’s take two main topics I express as a main takeaway. Number one, with discipline comes freedom. And that’s exactly what you express, right? The discipline of execution, running a plan, being successful, that generates freedom. And number two is always having this growth mind and entrepreneurship mindset in mind. It’s a double mind, right? To really make things happen, right? You learn only when you do something. It doesn’t come on PowerPoint. It doesn’t come in theory. If we want to learn and want to change our existing world, we need to do it. And even you win or you learn. That are the two things you are doing.

Speaker0:[35:46] So, Ahi, what are your takeaways? I enjoyed the exchange very much. I always enjoy talking to you guys. The questions were on point. And you surprised me with a couple, with a code on blue one. And also one of my learnings is that I need to brush to update my bio because I actually released another book last year, which is about measuring innovation. And I’m almost ready to release another one that focuses on open innovation. So if any of the listeners is interested, you’re welcome to search my name in Amazon and you will find the books that I released on the topic. It’s a fascinating topic. I think that you can see from my energy how passionate I am about it and what drives me. And, you know, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Ah, we have a small tradition at this stage of every episode. And it’s about a special question towards our guest. And this time, actually, I had a new one because I thought this one here is about innovation. And I asked myself, how do you keep inspiring yourself on a regular basis? What are you doing to keep momentum?

Speaker0:[36:57] If I take a page from how I manage my personal time, there is always the daily routine that draws you in. All of the things that seem to be urgent and important, but if you really look at them, a very small portion of them are really important. Most of them are noise and urgency. And you need to set aside time in your personal life to think about the future and what is your winning outcome. in various aspects of your life and plan it properly and allocate the time, set out the time to do it. As an organization, I think you need to do a similar thing. You need to allocate some time on a regular basis for people to think about the future of the company, solving management challenges, taking the organization strategically to where management wants to go, but in big leaps and bounds. How do you do that? So you allocate some time on a regular basis. You allocate some funding on a regular basis for people to actually run what we said, the experiment, the MVP, whatever you want to call it. And for management to make the decisions on where the organization is going and on the particular ventures that the organization wants to invest in. So as Uli said, it’s about discipline.

Speaker0:[38:11] And trusting a process. The cool thing here is that you’re talking about creativity and entrepreneurship, but at the same time, you’re creating a structure for it. So it’s like we have a term inspired, we call it managed chaos, right? So you have very clear steps inside each step. You have a lot of degrees of freedom, but it’s very well structured and managed. So this discipline and staying the course is what you need to do in order to keep that spirit alive. So Uli, does that resonate with the way you are inspiring yourself?

Speaker1:[38:44] It resonates a lot. You know, I’m thinking a bit, Ahi, when I was young, I’m not sure if I bought into that idea directly. Because everybody, especially me in younger times, put discipline in some corner where it’s not fun, where it’s always boring, blah, blah, blah, blah. But when you are really enjoying doing steps and really being rigorous on that, you see the beauty on that. And with that experience, I would love to have somebody who told me already in my younger ages that this generates a lot of freedom. I would embrace that even more. So therefore, thank you very much. Yes, it resonates a lot with me.

Speaker0:[39:30] Ahi would you like to tell our listeners where they can find out more about the topics we discussed today and where they can get in touch with you yes absolutely so first of all you can find me on linkedin ahi gewirzmann uh a h i ahi gewirzmann is g v i r t s m a n seek me out on linkedin there’s a link there where you can schedule a quick call with me we also have the website www.spyre.group. You can also check out, we have quite a lot of material there and you can also schedule time with me or one of my partners and also seek out my books on Amazon. Cool. Thank you, Ari. And thanks for the time and for being our guest today. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure and honor to meet you guys. This was a digital pacemaker podcast on employee entrepreneurship our guest was arhi gertzmann chief knowledge officer at spire group further information and links to the current episode can be found in our show notes and if you want to discuss the topics with us comment on our linkedin posts or send us a message the digital pacemaker podcast is released every tuesday on spotify apple and wherever your podcasts are available click follow or subscribe now to make sure you never miss an episode. Have fun and see you soon. You’re Uli and Markus.

Speaker1:[40:52] Rock and roll.

Music:[40:53] Music

Speaker1:[41:00] Der Digital Pacemaker Podcast ist eine Produktion von Maniac Studios.

 

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