The Innovation Booster #5

The Innovation Booster is a monthly periodical bringing you five great reads on innovation, strategy, and growth that will inspire you to act, kick off your creativity, and challenge you to think differently.

In this issue of The Innovation Booster I feature great reads on innovation boards, hiring talented people, six reasons AI projects fail, how AI made customer validation more difficult, and making customers love you:

1. Corporate Innovation Governance: A Practical Guide. Article 3 — WHEN by Susana Jurado Apruzzese. Innovation boards, special-purpose governing bodies with mandate to invest into innovative projects and ventures, must meet on a regular cadence to ensure portfolio investments are progressing at a good pace. Finding a good rhythm is vital for setting the expectations for both innovators and decision makers. Susana shares cadence that worked best at Telefónica.
2. How to hire people who are better than you by Jason Cohen. Investing in innovation is also investing in future talent and capabilities. Jason suggest three heuristics to rely on when recruiting talent that is outside of your core expertise: (i) you wish to implement their ideas, (ii) you learn something from them, (iii) they have potential to elevate the whole organisation, and (iv) ask them how would they deal with a real problem you have.
3. Why AI Projects Fail: 6 Mistakes That Kill ROI (and How to Fix Them) by Dan Toma. AI is all the rage these days. It is also a stellar reminder of how little we have learned about developing innovative projects. Dan goes into six specific issues he has encountered, but truly, #1 dwarfs the all: starting with a solution. And solution-first approach still sucks.
4. AI and Teaching – The Brave New World by Steve Blank. The godfather of Lean Startup confirmed what I have been observing in the corporate world as well: AI has made customer validation harder, diminished the quality of insights (from research and experimentation), and overwhelmed the customers. We are at peak uncertainty, and should focus on learning as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Worst time to delegate thinking and creativity.
5. On Making Customers Love You by Bruno Pešec [subscriber exclusive]. Innovation is about value creation. But is it about your customer loving you? Or something else? Well, it most certainly isn't about making their life miserable.

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