Tag: #innovating

How Innovators Can Be Peripheral Visionaries

March 31, 2020 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 114 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about how innovators can be peripheral visionaries!

Sections

Introduction
Scott’s Affinity For Futurist Ideas
A Peripheral Visionary
Asking Questions & Listening Like Sherlock Holmes
Interesting Projects Scott is Working On Now
Conclusion: “Stay Curious”
More Episodes
Show Notes

How Innovators Can Be Peripheral Visionaries

Introduction

Paul: Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’re talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies in Canton, Michigan. Welcome, Scott. Are you there?

Scott: I am here. Good to be with you, Paul.

Scott’s Affinity For Futurist Ideas

Paul: So now how did you find out you had an affinity for this kind of futurist ideas and sort of thinking outside the box? You know, you don’t sound like somebody who wants to go and just be satisfied in a retail job or whatever. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that. But what were the things that happened and gave you hints that that’s where you wanted to be? Or did it just happen?

Scott: Well, it’s not like there was a flash of lightning, and I heard a voice from the heavens crying out to me. It’s one of these things that crept up on me over a while. I tend to stay very engaged online. I try to follow people who are interesting and different from me — right? — to help color my view with lots of different ideas. I am innately curious. Dorothy Parker famously said, “Curiosity is the cure for boredom. There is no cure for curiosity.”

So, I continue to feed my, my curiosity gene. And at a certain point, I began to be able to discern where I thought things were heading. and call it a sixth sense, call it a matter of being well read, both in current events and in history, and I just am able to kind of put these pieces together.

Paul: Interesting.

Scott: It’s funny because the auto dealer that I helped with his customer experience we both kind of worked through this, and we said that there’s really no direct competitor to auto dealers. I mean, they’re protected by franchise laws, for the most part. There’s really no inherent threat there. But if you look about, look around and, and observe how people are treating technology, the auto industry is going to be affected by Apple and Netflix and Amazon and Uber to a certain degree. But, these are about behaviors. They’re not about taking over the auto industry. It’s because people have become accustomed to getting everything on demand with the click of a button in a day or two. We’ve become accustomed to that level of convenience.

So, we said, okay, well that’s the expectation. How do we take that now and apply it to the auto industry, to the dealership experience specifically?

Paul: Yeah, that’s fascinating. It’s a whole world ripe for disruption.

A Peripheral Visionary

Scott: I call it being, I mean, people talk about futurists being visionaries. I like to think of myself as a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future but way off to the sides because that’s where the threats come from. They come from out of left field when you’re least expecting them.

Paul: That’s, that’s a great way to put it. I think that was a Seinfeld line too. “I’m a peripheral visionary.”

So, when you grew up, what were your interests?

Scott: Believe it or not, I actually wanted to be a doctor.

Paul: Okay.

Scott: I was premed at Boston University and was actually president of the Premed Society. But I was going through university and grad school at a time when managed care was beginning to make its name known. And I realized as I got into the first year of medical school that there needed to be people that were scientifically knowledgeable on the business side and to be able to give reasonable suppositions as to what outcome might be in an informed way without being heartless about it.

So I said, well, let’s see what I can do here. Right? And I decided pretty quickly that I didn’t want to go the pure science route. So, I added an MBA with a concentration in healthcare administration at turning the medical experience into a master’s degree with a thesis, so it was a Masters in Medical Science. And embarked on a world of managed care.

Stayed with that for about three years until my forehead began to get flat from all of the repeated bangings on the wall. But realized, again, and this is in retrospect, Paul. I wanted to innovate and that industry was just so slow moving and bureaucratic. There was going to be no innovation in the discernible future. And I guess that’s’ where I first began to see things differently and got this spark.

Paul: Interesting. So when you were 10, 12, 13, 14, did you say, “I want to grow up and be a doctor?”

Scott: Uh, pretty much around the early teen years, I think.

Paul: Okay. That’s interesting.

Scott: An I had a great family doctor. And I just knew I wanted something where I felt like I could help people.

Asking Questions & Listening Like Sherlock Holmes

Paul: Okay.

Scott: And when I mentioned… I would have been a doctor if it wasn’t for that science thing. I think my enjoyment of medicine, what I had experienced up until then, was on the patient relation side — taking a history, getting to know the patient, asking questions — which in turn goes back to another childhood interest I had and still have. And that’s Sherlock Holmes.

I discovered Sherlock Holmes when I was about 14 and then discovered there’s all these people around the world that belong to these clubs. They meet regularly, and they’re people from all walks of life. And you can discuss the character in the stories, but it’s really about people getting together to get to know each other. And as I talked to more of these people, I realized that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who himself was a physician, was influenced by Dr. Joseph Bell, who was a medical school professor of his. And one of the most important things he learned in Bell’s classes was taking patient histories and observing and taking it all in. So, this is really where, you know, Holmes got his profession as a consultant.

Paul: Interesting, interesting. Well, that’s the listening and the hearing and listening are critical. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned that you have to listen because people are telling you a lot of information that might not be clear. Fascinating.

Scott: That’s right. Yeah. I mean, again, take it back to that dealer. If I took him at his word and he said, “We’re at 100% capacity,” anyone could have taken that at face value and go “Oh, uh-huh. I get it.” But I heard it, but I also heard there was something in his voice as if to say, “We need help with it.” And it, again, taking the listening together with the previous knowledge, it’s one thing to listen and as you’ve stated, it’s absolutely important. But it’s taking that listening together with — whether it’s experiential knowledge or a theoretical knowledge or what have you, and putting the two together, that really makes the magic happen.

Interesting Projects Scott is Working On Now

Paul: Interesting. So, do you have any interesting projects you’re working on now that you can tell us without revealing too much?

Scott: I am working with a fintech startup right now, that is looking to create a new opportunity for small investors. So, we all see these, these unicorn IPOs, these incredible valuations, and there’s a bit of a check happening in the marketplace right now. But you see these IPOs, and the average investor wants to get in on the ground level, and the price is announced, and then it spikes on the first day, and then it fades off. You can never actually get in at the same level as the early investors.

And so this fintech startup I’m working with is looking to create a new marketplace whereby small-medium businesses that need capital but that don’t want to give away ownership of their firm can be part of a marketplace and small investors who have, say, a minimum of a thousand dollars to invest and so they’re lower than angel investors, but they’re not VCs — can actually invest in these companies and be part of their eventual stock offering somewhere down the road. So, it’s a win-win. And we’re in the midst of designing this right now, putting the fund in the marketplace together.

Paul: Very cool. When will that be a reality?

Scott: Well, I think we’re targeting summer of 2020. There are a couple of early clients right now, so I’m just helping them get some deals in place.

Closing

Paul: Very cool. Well, Scott has a great website as well as a great LinkedIn page, which we’ll have links to in the show notes. Is there anything you’d like to specifically cite or direct our audience to that you think would be of interest?

Scott: Well, I mean, if you go to my website, I would encourage you to sign up for my Timeless and Timely Newsletter. It’s really about the intersection of the past and the present and helping leaders of tomorrow get where they need to go. I usually bring up some references from literature, philosophy, or history, and then bring it back around to something that’s going on today.

Paul: Cool. Alright, anything else? Any shameless plugs?

Scott: I think that’s all I’ve got at this point.

Paul: Alright. Well, as you’re aware, we’ve been talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies. And there’s going to be a whole bunch of show notes based on what we’ve talked about. And we’ll have his contact information there as well. Some really cool stuff that Scott has done and I think he’s given us some good encouragement to look at things a little bit differently. So, Scott, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate it and hope to have you on in the future again.

Scott: It’s my great pleasure, Paul. Thank you.

More Episodes:

This is Part 3 of 3 our interview with Scott Monty. If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here: https://saviorlabs.com/innovation-marketing-strategies-with-scott-monty/
If you missed part 2, you can listen to it here: https://saviorlabs.com/innovation-looking-to-the-future-learning-from-the-past/

Show Notes:

Innovation: Looking To The Future & Learning From the Past

March 17, 2020 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 113 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about looking to the future of innovation and learning from the past!

Sections

Introduction
Dealing With Skeptics
How to Approach Innovation In Your Business
Henry Ford: A Business Historical Perspective
Start With The Basics
Looking To The Future & Changing With The Times
Conclusion: “Stay Curious”
More Episodes
Show Notes

Innovation: Looking To The Future & Learning From the Past

Introduction

Paul: Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’re talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies in Canton, Michigan. Welcome, Scott.

Scott: Good to be with you, Paul.

Dealing With Skeptics

Paul: So do you find that the people who engage you are because you have a track record in their mind?I know there’s probably a lot of repeat business, but then there’s this sort of subset, I would imagine, that are skeptical. It’s like, okay, I don’t know. You know, “I can see everything. I know everything about this. You know, what’s he going to add? He doesn’t even know this business.”

Scott: Yeah.

Paul: And how do you deal with that because… First of all, have you had that challenge? And then how did you deal with that?

Scott: So, the types of clients that I have right now, it’s largely referral and word of mouth. I’ve been writing a blog for,I guess, going on fifteen years now. So I’ve got a track record of what I guess you could call thought leadership. I won’t claim the mantle, but, you know, that’s what other people have said.

I certainly made a reputation for myself at Ford. And largely the people that approach me are people that are already believers. Like that dealer, you know. Here’s a guy who I didn’t have to convince him that something needed changing. He knew a change needed to happen. He just didn’t know how to get there. Right? And I find those are the leaders that I enjoy working with the most, is those who are naturally curious and those who are constantly pushing for something different, something better.

However, I will say that in my career, I have come across plenty of skeptics, and I actually had an opportunity to convert one of them, or so I thought, at a meeting of the entire C-suite at Ford Motor Company. This was back in 2011, I think. I was asked to give a presentation on the state of social media, more broadly and specifically what it meant for the company.

And I went into this room. And, remember this is late ’10, early ’11. So, oil and gas prices were still high. Every executive around the room had fuel prices on their mind as Ford was thinking about its way forward. And I acknowledged that, and I said, “Before I begin this presentation – And by the way, I happened to be seated directly in between the CFO and the COO. I was in the seat that normally the CEO held at these meetings. And I looked around the room, and I said, “Everybody has this at the back of their mind, so let’s see if we can get a little consumer research.”

So I went onto the Ford corporate Twitter account, and I asked the audience, “When you buy your next car, what’s the minimum MPG you’d like to see — miles per gallon — you’d like to see from it?”

And I, I hit “send,” and I gave my presentation, and about 20 minutes later, I opened up the Twitter feed, and all of these responses were in there — about a hundred or so responses. And it ranged from “Don’t matter the MPG as long as it got a V8 engine in it” all the way up to “300 miles per gallon.”

But most of the answers were in the 30s and 40s, which is exactly where Ford had been targeted over that two to three period range. So it validated the strategy. And the CFO, the guy who was the most skeptical of digital and social, who wondered whether people were wasting their time, whether this was productive for the company, he pushed back from the table and he put his reading glasses up on his forehead and he looked over at me and he said, “Do you know, if I had insights like this every day, I would find it invaluable.”

So, in that very moment, I made a believer out of a skeptic. And it was all about speaking his language, putting it in a frame of reference where he could work with it. Now, this isn’t a guy who’s going to be creating his own Instagram feed or you know, you name it. This is a guy who thinks about it from a utilitarian point of view. But until we actually packaged it in a way that was useful to him, he didn’t see the value in it.

Paul: Of course, yeah. How would he know? How could he perceive it?

Scott: Right.

Paul: It’s as good as not existing.

Scott: Exactly.

Paul: Fascinating, fascinating. Now, you said… Did he continue to, to believe? Or did he wane on that?

Scott: Well, he did because he was the guy we had to go to when we wanted funding. So, yeah. Obviously, we had to prove our case each time, but we didn’t have to prove the fundamentals to him. So, it became a less frustrating exercise and more of an exercise in creativity.

Paul: Okay, alright. That’s fascinating.

How to Approach Innovation In Your Business

Paul: So now, a lot of our listeners are small to medium-sized businesses. They’d love to be Ford, which was once a small business. But it took them a little while to get there. What would be your counsel to a… So, let me think about just different businesses we’ve talked to here in New England that… Let me think.

There’s a CPA firm. Typical. It’s tax season. They do taxes. That’s where they make most of their money. They do some advisory work, etc. You’ve got two typical partners and they’re busy. They do the work themselves. They’ve got a few people working for them. How would you help them navigate? And I know this is out of the norm. We’re taking a thousand horsepower person with you and putting them in a little two-seater here. So, it’s way oversubscribed.

But how would they approach innovating in their business in a way? And I’ve been asked this question before, and you don’t want to come up with this just real leap of faith. Well, you know, you can do… there’s one of the banks out there that now, it’s a restaurant and a bank. I forget which one it is. But, you can go and get coffee at the bank. And it’s like, okay, you know. It sounds like they’re reaching. So, I’ll let you sort of pontificate on that. What do you think about that?

Scott: Well, first, Paul, what I would say is that I don’t presume to know as much about their business as they do. That will always be the case. And I will defer to business owners for their level of expertise. But I do start by asking a lot of questions. So I’m at a little bit of a disadvantage here since we’re just creating this hypothetical.

But first I would start with kind of the Socratic Method, as it were and, and try to get more information out of them through a series of questions or observations. About a flow through or whatnot, I would observe what’s going on in the place of business.

Henry Ford: A Business Historical Perspective

Scott: But here’s the thing. Let me approach this from a business historical perspective as Henry Ford did when the Model T came about. His whole idea was… You know, he created the quadricycle, and that was his first opportunity to experiment with the combustion engine. Ford Motor Company came along in 1903 and the Model T debuted in 1908. So, there were years where this was in development. And his idea eventually was to create a car that could be used by virtually any American and would have a variety of utilities to it.

So, a couple of things happened. One, he began to produce enough cars that the cost per unit was driven down. In 1908 it cost, I think, $850, which was pretty expensive back then. But by the late teens the cost was $250 per car. So, by scale, he brought the price down. Again, simple math. In this process — and you probably are familiar with this phrase, he said, “You can have any color you want as long as it’s black.” Right? And people thought that was because he was not innovating. Well, the opposite was true. He was innovating so much, the car was in such high demand, he knew that black paint was the fastest drying paint.

Paul: Oh, interesting.

Scott: So it was the paint that allowed him to produce the more of vehicles. But when it comes down to innovation, he created his product in such a way that it could be used, it could be converted into a tractor; it could be easily adapted as a pickup. You could even put snow tracks on it and use it on the snow. Right?

So, he was already designing something with a better customer experience in mind. And it started small, and it got big, and I think the same thing applies to whether you’re a CPA or a real estate agent or what have you. It’s about making these observations at the minute level.

Start With The Basics

Scott: So, for example, you’re a CPA. Where does most of your business come from? Is it online? Are you competing with the TurboTaxes of the world? Or is it local business that you’re serving? And if so, how are you actually transmitting business to them? Are you meeting them at their place of business? Are you making them come to your office? Could you do sessions where you borrow a gymnasium for an afternoon and get a line of people queued up and run them right through? Are you associated with a collective of other similar businesses or related businesses where you can each feed off of each other? I mean, these are all very basic things. I’m kind of grasping at straws here. But again, it’s starting with the very basic.

It may not sound sexy. It may not seem like it’s completely scalable, but you’ve got to start somewhere because from those, from those initial tweaks, then you may see a bigger one, a bigger opportunity come by. Or you may run into something that you never expected. If you’re the bank that has opened the coffee shop, okay, I don’t know why people want to spend so much time in a bank. I’ve seen auto dealers with coffee shops. Well, people are getting their oil changed, and they want a more premium experience rather than the stale donuts and crappy coffee on the sideboard there. Okay, I get that.

But what reason are you retaining people in the bank? And, if you’ve got them in the bank, then what other opportunities are you making available to them? Would you have other small business owners available to do an open house with them one day per week at that coffee shop or a seminar or something to help them grow their business that’s a value add that doesn’t feel like it’s some kind of awkward square peg in a round hole?

Paul: That’s interesting.

Looking To The Future & Changing With The Times

Paul: So, I want to go back to something you mentioned about the initial years of the car with Henry Ford. So, there was a whole ecosystem pre-car that was taking care of the feeding the animals, the horses, cleaning up after them. Now, this is ultimate hindsight, but what would you have counseled the horse manure cleanup people to do? I mean, thinking about it from now, it’s like, okay, I go around. I’ve got some low-paid people, low-skilled, and I pick up horse manure. And that’s my job, and that’s my business. And I can’t imagine a world in which there are not horses on the street of New York. How am I going to pivot? Let’s go back. And what would you have counseled them? I’m even just thinking myself. What would I have counseled them? I know the rest of the story.

Scott: Yeah. We certainly have the benefit of hindsight now. What I like to help executives do is to think in terms of analogies. And I’ll give you an example.

Back when social media was first rearing its ugly head in business — and there were a lot of skeptics back then. I mean, again, something we take for granted now. But you think about the advent of Twitter and of Facebook and even email at a certain point. Somebody shared an article with me from a business journal. And it was kind of like a case study that all these employees were petitioning the boss to allow them to have access to this new technology. And again, the boss, very skeptical, was concerned that it would be a drain on productivity. But in order to assuage his employees, in order to, to get them off of his back, he said, “Well, let’s, let’s run an experiment. Let’s set up kind of a central kiosk out in the middle of everyone’s desks where we can keep an eye on this so we know that people won’t be wasting their time, and they won’t be giving away corporate secrets or anything like that. It will be kind of a publicly available thing.”

And do you know that that business journal was from the 1920s, and the technology was the telephone? Now, again, you think about how closely we use all of these utilities from telephone to email to, to digital and social. It’s just taken for granted. So, put yourself in the situation of the horse manure guy. The question is what kind of analogy could you present to him to help him understand that there will be change coming. We not know exactly what it’s going to look like, but you need to be ready to adapt.

It could be that, with the advent of street cars, let’s say, that began to reduce the the number of, or at least the routes of horses and carriages in the city. Alright, well, we’re only operating, on the side of the road now. You know, we’re not operating in the center. Or now we’ve actually seen more of our business driven out to the suburbs rather than the city center. Right? So, we can already begin to see some of these things. So, you know, my recommendation would be, if I were more farsighted than some folks… This is the interesting thing, Paul. I tend to pride myself on my knowledge of history and literature and the things that have already happened, but at the same time, I kind of think of myself as a futurist. Right? “What’s past is prologue.” It’s quite simple as that. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about.

So to say to the manure guy, “You might think about focusing on places where we know horses are going to be needed regardless of how this car thing works out.” Farms, zoos, circuses, wherever. Equestrian shoes. You know, wherever we see horse concentrations now get them to start thinking about alternative markets and how they can actually continue to be part of that niche rather than fighting what we all know is coming, even though we’re not be able to see clearly what it is.

Paul: Right. It’s very much like innovation. It’s like that’s not obvious, but once it happens, it was very obvious.

Scott: Exactly.

Paul: I think it’s the core of the issue here is how do you get people to take the leap to understand or even take the leap to consider understanding what might be.

Conclusion

As you’re aware we’ve been talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies. There’s gonna be a whole bunch of show notes based on what we’ve talked about and we’ll have his contact information there as well.

So, Scott, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.

Scott: It’s my great pleasure Paul, thank you.

More Episodes:

This is Part 2 of 3 our interview with Scott Monty. Stay tuned for Parts 3 coming soon! If you missed Part 1, you can listen to it here: https://saviorlabs.com/innovation-marketing-strategies-with-scott-monty/

Show Notes:

Innovation & Marketing Strategies With Scott Monty

March 3, 2020 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 112 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re talking with executive advisor Scott Monty about innovation and marketing strategies!

Sections

Introduction
Connection to Innovation
New All Over Again
Influencer Marketing
The Common Thread of Marketing
Customer Experience Is Important!
Make Life More Convenient For Your Customer
Results of Focusing on Customer Convenience
The Obvious is Not Always So Obvious
Conclusion: “Stay Curious”
More Episodes
Show Notes

Innovation & Marketing Strategies With Scott Monty

Introduction

Paul: Good afternoon, everyone. Today we’re talking with Scott Monty of Scott Monty Strategies in Canton, Michigan. Welcome, Scott. Are you there?

Scott: I am here. Good to be with you, Paul.

Connection to Innovation

Paul: So. Tell me. Where are we talking to you? What is your connection with innovation?

Scott: Wow. Uh…

Paul: It’s a big question, I know. We’ve gotta just put some handles on it.

Scott: Nothing like jumping right in. I like that. Well, I think there’s a few different ways to look at innovation. And I think innovation in its more common form is thought of in terms of what new wiz-bang thing are you inventing or creating. And, I think that’s perfectly valid.

My take on things actually comes by looking backward, if that makes any sense. I am a classics major from a long time ago. Communications and marketing professional. And what I’ve realized over the course of two decades in the business is that human nature remains the same. You know, we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We keep reacting the same way to things.

And my message to executives when I work with them and their teams is to not think about the latest trend or technology per se, but to focus on the throughput, that line that we see that, that takes us through humanity for all time and then to decide how you’re going to interact with someone based on knowing that about them. And, you may end up on various platforms. You may end up with different ways of speaking to people. But in a lot of ways, we’re going back to the basics, the things that we knew from 40, 50, 60 years ago that worked in business that somehow we’ve thrown aside. And it seems like they’re new all over again.

New All Over Again

Paul: Interesting. Do you find that the people you’re working with think they’re new?

Scott: In some cases, but in other cases, people just kind of slap their forehead and go, “Oh, that’s so… It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I think of that?” And I think this is, again, human nature. We get so focused on what’s right in front of us and on the things that are most important to us that sometimes we neglect to pick our heads up and see the forest through the trees, as it were.

Paul: Right, absolutely. It’s a very obvious statement when you say it, but yet it’s something that everybody needs to be reminded of. Can you give us some anecdotes of where that’s happened just in your recent experience? Not necessarily naming names or products or thing but just sort of some context… Because I think there’s a lot of people who look at the landscape around them and think, “Everybody else has it more together than I do.”

Influencer Marketing

Scott: Yeah, that’s the common thing. And guess what — nobody has a playbook. You know, when we led digital and social at Ford from 2008 to 2014, we were doing things that had never been done before. We were the first car company to reveal a vehicle on Facebook. We were the first ones to really embrace influencers, right? And here’s a topic that’s really relevant now.

We hear all about influencers, influencer marketing, etc. Well, in 2009, Ford put together a program called the Fiesta Movement. And the idea was this. Ford was in the midst of reinventing itself of becoming one company all around the world instead of a bunch of different siloed organizations. And they wanted to share the same engineering expertise, the same marketing expertise, and really begin to work at scale.

And the idea was, well, if we’re going to create a car — let’s say the Ford Focus — it’s going to be the same all the way around the world. And the Fiesta had just snuck in under cycle but somebody looked at this small car and they said, “Hey, you know what? What is coming out in Europe this year. We’re going to bring it out in America the following year. Why don’t we bring 100 of these vehicles over from Europe and put them in the hands of 100 people who have Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Flickr accounts, blogs, etc. — and again, this is 11 years ago — and give these cars to a hundred people for six months. And all the requirement was they had to make one video a month. And there was a common theme that everybody stuck to each month.

But the genius here is what Ford did was take all of those people’s feeds — their Twitter feeds, their blog, RSS feeds, etc. and aggregated them on a Ford-owned website and allowed that content to be viewed, unfiltered, unedited, in real time, which did a couple of things.

One, it showed how confident Ford was in its product design, that, people weren’t going to find anything inherently wrong with the car. But number two, it also showed that Ford is willing to take the word of third-party individuals —not only its marketing team — and that’s who people connect with. People like themselves. Right?

So, I recently talked about this as a case study when I was giving a strategic communications speech, and, again, this stuff is 11 years old, and yet it still works today because the principles are inherently the same.

Paul: Right. Right. It’s sort of like physics and mathematics. It really doesn’t change all that much. It’s really how we apply it.

Scott: Yeah, I like that.

The Common Thread of Marketing

Paul: So, that’s fascinating. What do you see as you’re dealing with different people? Is there a common thread of… I’ll just say it. Is there a common thread? I’ll go deeper on that as we go, of reaction or action or lack of action by your consultees, I guess? Is that the word? The people you consult with.

Scott: Why it’s interesting because whether you’re talking about the content that they’re producing online or the experience that they’re creating in real life at a store or a… wherever they’ve got customers coming in, they’re focused on getting attention. And, I’ve worked with a number of auto dealers, and there’s a group that continues to pay for new customer acquisition. You know, that’s where most of their budget goes — into lead generation. I think that’s the case of a lot of B2B companies. They focus on lead generation.

And at the same time, they’re not putting a lot of effort into the actual customer experience. What are you doing to retain your customers? What are you doing to make them feel like they’re part of a community, like you are bringing them value every day rather than they’ve just signed the contract with you?

And, and I think if people can get in the mindset of retention rather than attention that will start to turn the bow of this big aircraft carrier that we’re trying to swing around.

Customer Experience Is Important!

Paul: Okay. So, are you seeing that with the people that you’re working with, that they don’t, comprehend customer experience as the goal? They’re so focused on lead generation?

Scott: Well, I think they certainly want to do what’s right for the customer, but, again, it’s kind of lifting your head up and understanding outside of your own sphere. So many executives, brand managers, they get up first thing in the morning, and that’s all they’re thinking about is their company, their brand. And you can’t blame them. Again, human nature.

But I like to remind them that unless your brand is Dunkin’ or Starbucks, other people aren’t waking up first thing in the morning thinking about you. They have other priorities. They’re getting the kids off for school. They’re planning for 15 conference calls. They’re trying to put a PowerPoint together and on and on and on. So when people do have an opportunity to interact with your brand, what are you doing to bring them value? What are you doing to make things more convenient for them? What are you doing to make their lives a little bit easier through that busy day?

Make Life More Convenient For Your Customer

Scott: So, I’ll give you an example of how this actually came to life with an auto client. I got a call from a gentleman I’ve known for years, certainly from when I was at Ford. He’s the number one Honda dealer in the country. Number one used Honda dealer in the country. Number three, new.

And he called me up and he said, “We gotta work together.”

And I said, “Well, I don’t know how much more I can help you. It seems like you’re doing pretty well already.”

Well, this is a guy who’s never satisfied with the status quo. And he said to me, “Scott, dealers are dinosaurs. We’re dead, and we don’t even know it. The dealership model is broken.” And first of all, this was just music to my ears.

And I said, “Okay, well, how would you like to start?” Right? So, I went to his dealership, and it’s a little lot in Queens, New York. And I walked into the showroom, and cars are crammed into that showroom. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an auto showroom in a city. They make use of every square foot of floor space that they can so that you’re turning sideways to get between the cars in some cases. So already the, the experience felt like it was, it was difficult.

Paul: Suboptimal.

Scott: There you go. Suboptimal. I love that, Paul.

So he explained to me that he had 180,000 people in his customer email database, which is impressive in and of itself. And he said sales are going pretty well.

And I said, “Well, tell me about your service offering.”

And he said, “Well, our service base…” I can’t remember how many he said. Maybe 12 service bases. He said, “We are booked out six weeks in advance. We’re 100% full.”

I said, “Okay, tell me more. When are you open?”

He said, “We’re open seven days a week, 7 AM to 7 PM.”

And first of all, I thought that was impressive because not every dealer is open on weekends. In fact, in Michigan, they can’t be open on Sundays. It’s one of the blue laws. But I looked at that. I said, “Seven days a week, 7 to 7. Okay, you’re operating at 50%.”

And he said, “What?”

I said, “Yeah, what about the other 12 hours of the day?”

And he said, “Well, who’s going to want to bring their car in at 10:00 at night?”

And I said, “No one. That’s why you’re going to go and pick their car up from them.” And you could have seen his head explode, you know, right in front of me.

And by selecting a couple of vendors and designing a process whereby it was completely transparent to the customer, almost like the Domino’s pizza tracker, when your car gets into the oven, so to speak. They’re updating you. They’re sending pictures of what’s wrong with your car, because so many people have a distrust with dealerships and wondering if they’re getting screwed. They’ll say, “Okay, here’s your old brake pads. Here’s what new ones look like. Would you like us to change them?”

And guess what? You’re comfy at home on your couch watching sports or the latest reality show or The Crown or whatever you’re watching. And this text comes through, and it’s as simple as pressing a button to say “approve” and signing off on it and then you know your car’s going to be delivered to you in your driveway the next morning before you even need to take it to work. That’s a level of convenience and customer design that didn’t take rocket science, and it really didn’t take a lot of comprehensive or complicated technology. It was just about changing your frame of reference to think like the customer rather than to think like a traditional dealer.

Results of Focusing on Customer Convenience

Paul: Right. What were their results so far?

Scott: There have been incredible results. The first six months saw a 36% lift in not only the volume but in the amount of each repair order which dropped directly to the bottom line, because there were very few overhead expenses. They had to put on an additional shift of mechanics, but that was minor.

But there was an added side benefit that no one saw coming. As they were open in the middle of the night and as Uber and Lyft drivers were finishing their shifts and driving by, guess what. These guys need an oil change just about every week, and they just found somebody that’s open their hours. And they’ve become the new best friends of this dealership. And when these guys put 10,000 miles on their cars each week, they’re going to need new cars or used cars in short order. So, guess where they’re going to go to start doing that?

So, not only have you created a sense of loyalty and convenience from your existing customer base, but you’re actually reaching new customers that would have never thought about walking in your doors before.

The Obvious is Not Always So Obvious

Paul: You know, it’s funny. When innovators talk about an innovation, before they say it, it’s not obvious. The minute they say it, it’s completely obvious.

Scott: Right.

Paul: And, you have to arbitrate that because the minute you say it, “Well, that’s obvious, Scott.” Well, it wasn’t before you said it.

Scott: Yeah, if it was so obvious, why didn’t you figure it out? Right?

Paul: Exactly.

Scott: Yeah.

Paul: And that’s a sign of a good innovation. It’s like that’s the night and day difference.

Scott: Well, you know, it’s interesting because, I’ve worked with a number of executives who will dismissively say, “Well, I need a solution for such and such, and I’ll know it when I see it.” Well, no you won’t because if you did, you would have already… You know, you would have mortgaged your house to get opening day shares of Netflix or of Amazon. It’s that kind of thing.

Paul: That’s a great point. I mean, I’ve understood that, but that’s a great point. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

“Well, why didn’t you buy Apple?”

Scott: Yeah, exactly.

Paul: Yeah. That’s a really good point.

Conclusion

So, Scott, thank you very much for coming on the show. We appreciate it.

Scott: It’s my great pleasure Paul, thank you.

More Episodes:

This is Part 1 of 3 our interview with Scott Monty. Stay tuned for Parts 2 & 3 coming soon!

Show Notes:

Stay Curious! Innovation & Motivation

February 18, 2020 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 111 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re continuing our conversation with inventor Falk Wolsky! This time we’re talking about why it’s important to stay curious as an innovator! 

Sections

Introduction
Stay Curious About Everything
What Makes You Unique is Curiosity
Innogate Tech
You Need To Have An API Strategy
Falk Asks About Paul’s Inventions
Is Automation a Good Thing?
Making People Useful Again
Training People Who Are Willing To Learn
How Do You Motivate People To Change?
Conclusion: “Stay Curious”
More Episodes
Show Notes

What Sets Inventors Apart From Other People? – Part 2 of Our Conversation With Falk Wolsky

Introduction

Paul: We’re talking with Falk Wolsky. He’s the Chief Innovation Officer with Innogate Tech.

Is there anything specific you would like to talk about in this interview that would be helpful, you think, that I haven’t touched on yet?

Falk: This is a hard question.

Paul: I know. I’m sorry.

Stay Curious About Everything

Falk: Yes, yes. I will not sell my product. That is not fair. We talked about innovation, but I’m very interesting, hearing about how maybe we all will see supernova very soon. Scientists are very interested in it because in the nebula of Orion, there is one star, and he lose in the brightness, right? And in these days, in these weeks. And people are very curious because it’s maybe a sign that he will have supernovas. First time we actually can watch supernova.

Why I tell you this? Because you come back to this curiosity. Now I might say, “Why I should care? It’s not economically relevant. It’s not relevant for my calendar. It’s not relevant for my relationship and so on and so on.” But somehow, we are all part of this very big game. Right? We are the very small bubble, in a very small blue planet, flying around the very small star, in a very small galaxy and surrounding us. Might say this is a wonderful to trigger to look up and say, “Wow. Cool. Amazing.” This wow-cool-amazing is a wonderful world.” Let’s come back and have a wonderful world for Michael Ende, one of my favorite authors as a child. He was writing “The Neverending Story.” He said if you’re getting adult but don’t stay a child, you’re not a human.

Paul: Yeah, that’s true.

Falk: But what it is, is the eyes of children, not everywhere to see wonders but to stay curious. The one is you cannot see any time. Again, you have seen the buck. It’s still a buck. Wonderful. And after a thousand times, it’s still a buck. You learned it. Nevertheless, there is so much interesting things and to keep curious and stay curious.

What Makes You Unique is Curiosity

Falk: When you ask what is to say, what is to talk about, this is the key. Staying curious. In our world, it’s the definition. Maybe even to connect it to Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell.” It is one of the best and most accurate future prediction, some of any book I read. I read Asimov. I read Stanislav Lem and a lot of Strugatski. And so on and so on. Everyone has this vision how the future could be. But this Masamune Shirow was most accurate for fifty years. I’ll watch this because we get a good impression of what will be.

And there’s one scene – everything is very philosophical in this, and very military. It’s crazy all the time. It’s a shooting. It’s the special force of military for the government and so on. But there’s a scene with robots. They’re getting their own artificial intelligence, and they must curious. And that curiosity makes them special. And there’s one sentence in this time in which we live now, when everybody can have access to information as much as he need, because we all have internet. What makes you unique is curiosity. Because only then you will go and search and find and will build your own uniqueness. That’s a wonderful reward.

Paul: Yes, I think you’re right. I think, as I’ve been taking notes here, I underlined curiosity twice. I think that’s the definitive differentiator for an innovator. It’s somebody that’s really curious and how are we going to solve this in a different way.

So, one of the things that we will include in our show notes is some of the links that Falk has alluded to and also some of the things that he reads and frequents, both on the supernova and different things that he’s interested in as well as to his company, which… Well, tell us a little bit about that. You’re headquartered where? And what do you actually do on a daily basis?

Innogate Tech

Falk: The very first is it might be interesting. I live in two different countries, mostly likely in the hotels, because I work in Germany, and I work in Ukraine.

Paul: Okay.

Falk: Ukraine because I met my wonderful wife last year, and she was actually from Ukraine. I was, you will laugh about, curious to fly there and get in contact because she was reading, as one of the last people even I know — and then women — she was reading Strugatski. I said, “Not true. I need to get to know to you.” I come to Ukraine and we get in touch, and we fall in love, and we married. So, Ukraine. This is where Innogate reside.

Innogate is mainly focused to business applications. Roughly speaking about all this AP. And doing this for very big companies in the energy sector. In Ukraine you have DTEK for example. It’s a very big one. And what I dislike, they have, it seems to me still over 80% of charcoal to power. This is coal to power. Right? So, this is not really friendly. And in Ukraine, nobody cares. Right? They are not developed like, for example, Germany, when they look really close to the detail. How will we make electricity?

But they had a very good program and energy tariff in Ukraine to support solar and wind power. And this was a huge push also for this DTEK. And the baseline is still there’s people working there already. Roughly 300,000 people so far, I remember. That’s a lot. And they somehow need to work. And a workplace software all the time, contracted to customers, contracted to suppliers, management, field service — all this stuff.

And this kind of software Innogate makes. And, DTEK has a digitalization, master plan because they also understand when we do all of the paper forms. It will be a little bit slow. We cannot grow internationally. We cannot grow. We cannot save cost. And to digitalize, processes, is a huge thing.

Actually it starts very boring with the first question. Do you have everywhere Wi-Fi?

They say, “Huh? Yes, yes, we have. No, you mean office.”

“I don’t mean office. I mean do you have everywhere Wi-Fi? In the production sites, in the markets, at the stations where you go around?”

And then, ah-ha, okay, if you have everywhere Wi-Fi, people can work in a close network, and you have applications. Everyone has a smartphone that they need to access. That’s the first step.

You Need To Have An API Strategy

Falk: Then the question, do you have an API strategy? API is the possibility to offer you services for first to yourself. You will develop faster when you have a clear API strategy, and you can show others that you have these services. It was a very nice example. I worked once in Germany for E.ON, also energy producer. And they had to — you cannot believe. They had 800 internal — no. 800 external APIs and,1500 internal. It’s pretty lot. They said, “We have somehow we have 18 APIs only to get zip codes.”

Paul: Wow.

Falk: But these APIs, it’s a very good point when you can first invite developers, companies, and external service partners to go with you, together, and create a value. If you have smart meters, it’s very nice but how to connect and how to invite all the companies to invent something on that infrastructure, go with you? You need to have an API.

This, for example, I did also here in Germany, in GK where I worked for retail. This is one of the biggest companies producing software for retail. Whenever you go, for example, there’s retailers like Lidl, Walmart, we step by step. Also, go for American Market. And so, we go step by step then to produce software for the point of sale. One of the biggest, because this is a quite complex process. And it’s the same. I came to company and say, very brave actually, I said, “You don’t have an API strategy. You have to one. You have to have one.” We have now a very good API, and people, step by step, can integrate with us.

Falk: And that’s a very first point when you come in the sense of innovation, first make the basics. Right? Because you cannot invent something if you cannot connect to a company. API first, the right structure to scale. That is the point when you’ll come up, and then you can build step by step. I said, “Okay, we have to payment, we have to integrate with different software windows. We have to do this and this and that, and create products and so on.” And then teams, step by step, develop it.

Paul: Fascinating.

Falk Asks About Paul’s Inventions

Falk: Oh, okay. Now I have a question too. What about you? We talked a lot about me. Pretty boring. What about you? Who are you? And what you did? You’re also an inventor, I heard.

Paul: Yeah, I’m multidiscipline, done a lot of manufacturing stuff, a lot of technology stuff and when technology, computers come out, I saw a way to do a lot of the things that you would do in the manufacturing sector without getting your hands dirty. It’s like a manufacturing suite without – there’s no oil or grease. You don’t have to get dirt under your fingernails. I’ve done a lot of that over years, and I love technology. You know, the same stuff that you’ve done. We’re taking software, writing it. I’ve written software. Did a startup that was e-forensics in the email sector.

Falk: Yeah, okay. Very interesting.

Paul: Ended up selling that. I’ve done publishing software, publishing automation software for financial publishing and things like that. And the company I’m currently doing is sort of more a labor of love, but it’s an IT services firm, and I had an IT services firm in — let me think… I sold it in 2000, after about ten years. I really enjoyed that company. So, I started another one, IT consulting. And I’m sort of building that up right now. And that’s going very well and I’m enjoying it.

Falk: You’re so very early to potential in this software to automate everything. Right?

Paul: Yes.

Falk: This is the footprint I see when you told this.

Paul: Very much so. Very much so. There was an Apple campaign with Kinkos, very old, called Wheels for the Mind. And it really symbolized, or encapsulated, what you could do with technology. It was the ability to automate and give people more efficiency and basically amplify the number of people you had.

Is Automation a Good Thing?

Falk: Let me ask you something about it.

Paul: Yeah.

Falk: With my wife, we will build a foundation. And the foundation should take care about what we call the youthless society. I’m pretty sure you have heard already about it. Youthless society is the people, they get out-automated of their jobs. We have this discussion a lot, and I mean we have now a huge quote of people in the university already, and their jobs they later do still don’t exist.

And on the other hand, we have a huge amount of people, they will just out-automate, I say. As I see two directions as a very first — the truckers and the lawyers. The problem on them is they’re not high-skilled. If the trucks — especially the trucks are super easy in exchange to cars on the street in the city, but on the highway, it’s easier. And the big companies are very near to getting full-automated solutions of that in the range of five years. This is millions of people. Millions.

What they will do? They go to elderly care? I don’t believe so. They have, most of the time, no second job. And this is what you call the youthless society, and they will get more and more by this automation. So, one of the philosophical questions goes exactly this: If a human understands he can automate something, he will do. But it’s not always a good thing. How do you see this?

Making People Useful Again

Paul: Well, first of all, I mean, what we’re doing, we’re in the IT space. And the unemployment rate in the US is under 4%, under 3%. You can’t hire anybody. And what we we’re doing is we’re taking people that are unemployable or not skilled in technology and training them. If we can take a person who has good personality skills, we can add to them systems, automation, that can help them deliver technology solutions to a certain level.

I think that the new economy can be bent to the will of making people useful again. I think there’s a tremendous need for making them useful. And I think it’s going to be interesting because there’s going to be people who are not willing to want to learn something new. That’s the hardest thing to overcome, is how do you motivate somebody who has invested the large majority of their life into something that is now obsolete. And how do you get over that? I think that’s something that we need to come to terms with.

But I think it’s happened. There’s been industries. You know, you look at here in America, there’s been many industries that have come and gone that have been overseas moved to Asia or different countries. And, now many of those people, I don’t think were properly mentored or properly brought along, if you will. They weren’t really stewarded well. They were sort of allowed to just exist or have a basic subsistence life. But I think they also allowed themselves to have that basic subsistence life. And I think our society, in some ways encouraged that through welfare and things like that.

Training People Who Are Willing To Learn

Paul: There’s a big argument there is, well, we should take care of these people. But if you didn’t have it, and they were forced to go out and get a job, then they’d learn the new technologies, and so what I’m trying to do is, I want to take people and offer them free training and see if they’re interested in technology jobs and offer them… and hire people that have a good personality. Because that’s the one thing I can’t train is, if you have a bad personality, I can’t do anything about that. But I can teach you how to talk to a person and say, “Oh, what’s your issue? Oh, okay. Well, let me get the right person for you.” I can do all sorts of levels at that.

And so I think that, in some ways, we have a lot of green fields coming up. You know, that there’s a lot of opportunity in ways that people would have never imagined they could have worked twenty years ago or ten years ago. But it’s what we do with that. I think technology enables that, just like it enables all these other things. These people who are unwilling to change, I don’t think we just dismiss them and say, “Well, tough for you.” I think we need to, as a society, figure out how to shepherd them along so that they feel okay to…

In some ways, it’s sort of like “Well, you made the wrong bet. You went into the wrong career that isn’t going to be a long-lasting career, that you’re not going to be able to retire into.” I mean, even doctors nowadays, who knows what’s going to happen with them in America with the healthcare changes. If you were a doctor, you were set for life. Well, now it may turn into no. You have a standard wage, and that’s the way it is. It’s an interesting change.

So, I agree that we need to be good stewards of technology. And I do think that there is a tremendous potential for it to do exactly what you’re saying, that, for all these people to just be lost and not to be able to do that. I think what will happen is people will realize a little bit too late. I think we’re early realizing this. That they will realize that “Oh my gosh, we need to make these people useful to the technology economy because that’s the only way it’s going to scale.” So that’s my two cents.

Falk: Very good one. Very good one. I liked your answer a lot. Thank you very much. Some points I do agree. Some points are on my radar, let’s say two. Some are completely new.

How Do You Motivate People To Change?

Falk: What I take out of it is, what is not new is education, education, education. What is new to me, motivation. The big point is to motivate the guys who don’t want to learn new things. That is interesting. That is really a point when you say, “Okay, wow! How I do motivate them to change with the time?” And that is maybe the bigger one instead of education. Education you have all the tools in the moment. They’re electronic, classic. Right? You can do it. You can measure it afterward. But to motivate them, it’s a very good question. I will chew on it, I would say.

Paul: That’s the work. That’s the real work is to motivate them. So it’s an emotional thing is to…

Falk: True. That’s very good. This is something for my wife. She’s very good in all emotional stuff. She’s a marketing officer. She created a lot of brands. She’s very famous in Ukraine. [She has her own community, I might say. When she, step by step, going for international, and she is my emotional brain. So, I am the technical brain, and we are absolutely… Some people say we, as a couple, are complete. Might be. Might be.

Paul: I understand. I know exactly what you mean.

Conclusion: “Stay Curious”

Paul: Well excellent. We’ve been talking with Falk Wolsky. He’s the chief innovation officer with Innogate Tech, and you’re headquartered in — what would you say? Both Ukraine and…

Falk: Kiev. The one is in Kiev, Ukraine, and Germany, Berlin. Let’s say Berlin.

Paul: Okay. And we’ve had a great talk about innovation, and there’ll be a lot of links in the show notes to both his company and some of the things we’ve talked about. Any final words you’d like to say?

Falk: If I say now “stay curious,” it’s too, too simple.

Paul: Well. That’s a good one to say. Stay curious. I like that.

Falk: Stay curious. The final thought is that I’m very thankful for the talk. I enjoyed it a lot.

Paul: Excellent.

Falk: It was very good questions. Thank you also for that. And I wish all of us, especially in this times we have, in 2020 good year. Let’s come safe through to the year. This is concerning most of us in the moment, I believe.

And stay curious is the key. Right? Because, especially we see our future is more and more speed up, uncertain, flexible, changing. Everything is not like it was yesterday already. We will only survive if we are flexible and curious.

Paul: Yes, absolutely. Good words. Well, thank you very much.

Falk: Thank you very much too. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Paul: It was a pleasure to talk to you too.

More Episodes:

This is Part 3 of 3 our interview with Falk Wolsky. If you missed Parts 1 & 2, you can listen to them here:

Part 1: Exploring Innovation & Inventing With Falk Wolsky
Part 2: What Sets Inventors Apart From Other People?

Show Notes:

What Sets Inventors Apart From Other People?

February 4, 2020 / Hannah / 0 Comments

On Episode 110 of The Edge of Innovation, we’re continuing our conversation with inventor Falk Wolsky! This time we’re talking about what sets inventors apart from other people! 

Sections

Introduction
The Necessity of Curiosity & Patience
Curiosity As a Child
Falk Wolsky’s First Invention
More of Falk’s Inventions
Making Money By Inventing
Being Able To Sell A Product: The Magic Of Timing
The Story is What You Sell
Building a Story For Your Invention Takes Time
Closing
More Episodes
Show Notes

What Sets Inventors Apart From Other People? – Part 2 of Our Conversation With Falk Wolsky

Introduction

Paul: We’re talking with Falk Wolsky. He’s the Chief Innovation Officer with Innogate Tech.

So, what’s different about your experience? How did you grow into this? What happened to you as opposed to somebody that you grew up next door to? What’s different? Why are you somebody that looks at a problem and can say, “Gee, I got all of these tools or parts out there that I can go and build stuff with, or I can invent a new part.” As opposed to somebody who you said, you know, with the pie chart, which we’ll provide a link to if you can provide that. Why are you sort of saying… You ended up in the 1%. And I’ll bet you didn’t, when you were five or six years old, say, “Oh, I’m going to be an inventor.” Maybe you did. But…

Falk: Let’s say I was eight, it seems.

Paul: Okay.

Falk: I cannot say.

Paul: But what’s the difference? What’s that trigger that makes you want to say or just see? Because I think that, as I’ve experienced my own innovation development, I just see things and I’ve been eager to talk to people, other innovators and inventors of why do you see differently? What makes it so obvious to people like you, to people like me? And how do you explain that to other people that don’t see it? That don’t even see things that might be obvious?

The Necessity of Curiosity & Patience

Falk: I might say… Let’s go back to my age of sixteen years old. And my parents actually gave me, really early, pretty heavy books. I mean, I was reading Albert Einstein in the— what is it? — ninth class. So before high school anyway. But this is nothing extraordinary. I was just interested.

Well, let’s go back. I had a lot of books. I was reading. So, I had an attention span. I could survive a question. I was not being frustrated fast. And, after my six years, I was unbelievable. A lot of time just in the nature. We had a garden outside from our hometown, and I spent kind of every weekend pure into nature. I was turning everything. Stones, animals, grass, trees. I learned about how, how things moved, what is inside. So, I was just turning it. I was curious about everything.

And the difference, I do believe, is curiosity compared or connected to state of mind, that you don’t accept things at the first moment. I have an insight trigger that, all the time, let me ask, when everybody runs in one direction, a huge crowd, one direction, the first thing I said, “Stop. Why? Why they run?” Maybe it’s not good. Maybe it’s good. I don’t know. Let’s look at it. At least have an opinion to it. Not simply run.

And this question to everything compared with the curiosity then leads into the possibility to combine to make these sparks out of… You have seen a lot. And you have read a lot. But you do all of this and, honestly, without stop, I break up and brain start to work, and I go to bed, and the brain hardly stops to work. And between that and I swallow again, everything was just really interesting.

I have also, like you, exchanged with a lot of people. But I read also a lot. Right? This is kind of, 50%. I cannot say. But let’s say 20% of time per day, at least, I read. And this in combination, I believe, it makes it, for me at least, curiosity is kind of… Everything is interesting. I want to turn everything, and see how it is working.

Curiosity As a Child

Falk: I had a lot of technology stuff at home. What I did, actually I damage it. I just was kind of, I had this screw or tools, what you need, and I just kind of look inside. What is inside the clock? What is inside the radio? What is inside electric power? I was hit seven times by this 220 volt.

Paul: I’ve been there myself, yes.

Falk: Yeah, so I was curious. Right? And, the good thing is I was patient enough to put things together again that they work. And most people would get frustrated fast, and they left things in this age damaged. And maybe this is also the point. This attention span by the early reading, that I could survive frustration and go through and see hope, the possibility that things will work again compared to curiosity, compared to, or connected to this. We question things. I don’t accept status quo. And that is maybe the key.

Paul: Interesting. Now, how did your parents react when you took apart a clock or a radio or something like that?

Falk: I must say, from the point that when I see them now — they’re pretty old now, eighty years already and more — they must have an unbelievable patience with me. It seems to me actually there was, at that time, when I was young, they were already forty-something, almost fifity — I get adopted. Right? They were already pretty old when they get me. Maybe Five. Maybe they just said, “Let him do.”

Paul: Right.

Falk: And to make it, this was the huge chance I had. I had a free space, and I had the free space to, to try, and I was not cleaning up the room. It wasn’t mess, but it was all full of this technology stuff. And they somehow accepted it. I cannot say they were supporting it, but they accepted it simply and was not, not caring maybe too much or they were smiling. But it did allow me this freedom to have all of this.

And I might say, in all the time we say clean up in childhood, maybe this is bad. Maybe this small mess or this let them do helps.

Paul: Well, it sounds like they didn’t scold you, which is a big benefit.

Falk: Yes. I might say yes. This is true.

Falk Wolsky’s First Invention

Paul: Interesting. So, what was your first recollection of doing something innovative that was beyond just something that was interesting to yourself, but other people paid attention to.

Falk: The very, very first patent I wrote was virtual acoustic renderer. I was that time selling studio electronics — synthesizers, mixing poles and all this stuff, because I was DJ. I was young. I loved techno music — boom, boom and so on. And so, I was soldering a lot of stuff. But then I came to, what is, if you can calculate like in the [inaudible], a 3D rendering, but you can calculate sound. Actually, it was existing somehow to make architecture possible but not in the effect scene. In the effect scene, we still had a very classic compressors, echos, delays, and all this stuff.

Paul: What year was this about?

Falk: Oh, 2000 maybe. Something like this. It was roughly the time when I found my first company, agency. And, what happened, I got a lot of attention because at that time I was employee. So, they said, “Young boy, this is our invention.”

I said, “No, no, no. It’s my invention.”

“No,” they said, “No, this is our invention.”

“How’s that?”

“No, because you’re an employee.”

“Yes, this is an employee. This and an employee innovation.”

So, I was really angry.

Paul: You learned an important lesson.

Falk: So, I was a little bit disgusted with them. It was very nice to me. Gave it to me. I resigned immediately, and since then, I’m a freelancer. That was really the first time I got, recognition about an invention I did.

Paul: Wow. So that was pretty bold. I mean, that was a pretty big invention in the year 2000, to be able to do that type of modeling. It was not really easy at that time.

Falk: It was not. And now it comes from curiosity.

More of Falk’s Inventions

Falk: But fantastic story to tell. Can you believe? I’m born in the Eastern part of Germany. So actually, till I’m roughly twelve, we had no access to modern computers, let’s say. Exactly today, I shared on my LinkedIn, a picture of the computers of Eastern Democratic Republic we had. And I was experimenting on them. I cannot say I’m the super hacker. No, no. I was just experimenting and trying a little bit and was curious. And then we had the C64 Commodore, like everyone. And already on C64, I made a lot of music with trackers, and then we had Amiga. Wow. Huge. Amazing. Amiga 600 I had.

And then I’m stumbling on ray tracing program. It was calling. The first private ray tracer. You could 3D generate pictures at home. That was something completely outstanding. You couldn’t believe. We have 320 and 256 pixel. And this computer was calculating days. For once, in the picture, you could even watch, pixel by pixel, how it calculate backwards. It was not that clever like we do today. We have a lot of shortcuts invented since then in the 3D modeling.

So, I was watching these pixels calculating, but I did understand, as the documentation, it was very nice and described everything, how this works, how this ray tracing actually. What is the fundamental principle of following and live stream back from the object to the camera and so on. And that brings me to the idea, why not to do this with sound, and actually then you can…interpolate. You can say, okay, sound has these characteristics. It has resonance, it has some material, characteristics on the wall, on the instrument and so on and so on.

But this ray tracer from the Amiga 600, it was the birth of the idea, I might say. It was where it comes from.

Making Money By Inventing

Paul: Wow. Wow. So now, as you started to come up with these technology ideas, you learned that important lesson that you work for somebody, and they said, “Oh, no. We own it.” So, you started to crossover from ideas to the business side of it to understand that there’s a business aspect to it. How did that go? And what did you learn, and what lessons would you say to other people? Because, inventing something is one thing. Making money out of it is another thing.

Falk: That is a pretty hard thing. I completely agree. I had pretty struggling years with everyone, because mostly likely, I started after the dot-com bubble. So, all IT things was already suspicious in Germany especially. So, I had hard years with low income, I might say. I was running my own agency, and I did very classic things — websites first, corporate design, styling for companies, small programs. Then they asked me, “Can you do something that we can manage the content on website by itself?”

“Ah, database. You need. I can do it.” Develop.

“Can I sell something on a website?”

“Yes, you can sell.” Ecommerce, in this case. I did payment APIs and all this stuff. Very, very classic stuff. Right? No innovation here. That was for sure, some years.

Being Able To Sell A Product: The Magic Of Timing

Falk: And, then it comes to wonderful thing when we invented this coffee machine. And exactly as you say, this step, we’re still struggling. The coffee machine with this Twitter, is a nice thing. And actually, if you do it right, it could be a wonderful thing for brands, for customers, for food service and so on. And even though he liked it a lot that time. But wrong timing. It was too early.

At that time, investors didn’t even heard, in Germany, from IoT. They didn’t understand. There was still an ecommerce. There was a lot of rocket internet, and there was a lot of ecommerce stores, and that was the huge invention. So, we actually, we developed it, we presented it, but we did not land it. We was not able to make something bigger out of it. Actually, after one and a half years, we just gave up. This also could happen because we was not able to convince people, that time, how cool is it.

As you can imagine, it was 2009. And in 2016, they present a product so near to our first prototypes that we was frustrated a lot. And this is the magic of timing. They had the better timing for it.

Paul: Well, I’ve always said, “It’s not inventing the product. It’s being able to sell the product.”

Falk: Exactly. Exactly.

Paul: This is probably before your time, but there was a product called WordPerfect, and WordPerfect was not the better product, but it was sold much better than Word at the time. And, the story works out that Word was a better product and eventually got better sales, but it’s a fascinating story of, if you haven’t heard or read about WordPerfect, you should go back and do that. More for our listeners. But, I mean, that’s really the story between Mac and Windows. I don’t know if you’re a Mac or a Windows user, but the many people, the Mac ecosystem is very mature. But it has to be sold. And Windows was easier to sell.

Falk: Well, the most sales I had was actually, in all this time till of 2013 was my brain, that is IT stuff. Right? I made a lot of solution. I connected systems. I helped people to manage the different data stacks they have and so on and so on. So, this was more fundamental. And it was easy to sell because people needed this solution.

Products came later. But exactly as you say, that there’s a large gap between a technical solution, an idea, or a fundamental new way, how to see things, and how to sell. So, I collected, in this time, valuable experience exactly about this, what I call fundamentals. Right? Technology, business model. And all this together shapes products. And not technology itself, not the marketing itself and so on.

The Story is What You Sell

Paul: So, well, let’s get into that a little bit. How do you cross that chasm of selling? Do you see something that a customer has a need for and approach them? Or do they approach you? Or is it a combination? Or how do you talk about that?

Falk: Hmmm. That’s very interesting and fantastic question. And, that is the hard part, I might say. When we come back to the pen, somehow it happened all in this first twenty minutes. Because I saw the situation. I saw the kid. I saw him struggling, and I do understand it was all about attention, and all our economy is now already about attention. Do we have fundamental attention? Not problem but it’s in the room. Right? The topic. So that was easy. And let’s say all that was born in this — the story was there, and the story is what you sell.

Now I work already since, one and a half year on the product. It’s still a little bit in stealth mode. But it’s somehow in redefinition of how we work and working place and IT sector. And it took me, honestly, one year to find a good story for it. I understood what it is. I had seen clear where to go. I was already in a product development with my team. But I was not finding a good story, the catch, where, where you can explain what actually it is and why it is so good. It took one year to find it.

And it, I cannot say when it happened, somehow maybe in an airplane. Maybe it was even on a back flight from New York. It could be. I had six hours undisturbed, and I believe I did it in that time. I just opened the PowerPoint, and I start the question. “What will do if you go now to an investor? What you will tell him?” And the investor is somehow a little bit of an, of a preflight for the customer. Only if you convince investors you will have enough power to later on tell the story to the client. And investors are very critic. Right? So, we have just elevate the pitch, and we must fit or not. And I believe only by then, by this strong focus to this question, I was able to solve it.

Building a Story For Your Invention Takes Time

Falk: And I came actually to the very remarkable and fast thing. Let’s say if John, and John is the CIO, the chief information officer from big companies, and they have all the same problems. They need to deliver applications to their people. And they have not enough resources or not enough money to actually – the desire for application is kind of several ten times higher than John will ever be able to deliver.

So, I do develop a system. I mean, low code is nothing new, but we do it in a very nice way when you actually save, you can develop in ten times less. You don’t weeks. You need some days. You need a lot of less people. Instead of nine in a team, you need two people. That’s wonderful for an IT budget.

But the story behind is I have very first picture of John jumping out of the window. Right? Because he has the big problem. And the next picture is like on the fire workers, they have some time when they secure people. And that’s a nice picture. It’s a story, right? When you fall down on this pillow, we are glad for him, and he’s now safe because, well, we show him how we can deliver faster the applications. In some way, this gets visual. It gets tangible. People can understand there’s a pain from someone and so on. And so, we build a story on that, but it took me one year.

Paul: Interesting.

Conclusion

Paul: Well excellent. we’ve been talking with Falk Wolsky. He’s the chief innovation officer with Innogate Tech. And we’ve had a great talkabout innovation and there’ll be a lot of links in the shownotes to both his company and some of the things we talked about.

Well, thank you very much.

Falk: Thank you very much too. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Paul: It was a pleasure to talk to you too.

More Episodes:

This is Part 2 of 3 our interview with Falk Wolsky. If you missed Part 1 you can listen to it here:

Part 1: Exploring Innovation & Inventing With Falk Wolsky