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Hello everyone this is Braden Kelley with Blogging Innovation here with Seth Godin author
of 12 books including most recently Linchpin. Seth, I would just like to have a quick chat
about innovation and marketing with the folks out there that read the blog and follow along.
So first question I would like to explore with you is about insight and you talked a
bit about insight versus execution and you talked today at the world innovation forum
and I just wanted to explore a bit more with you when it comes to insight and organizations,
organizations often times when it comes to innovation think about ideas in generating
lots of ideas but for me insights were important, what do you think?
Seth: You know Jackson *** was one of the great painters of the 20th Century and
people think he didn't know how to paint. His teacher was Thomas Hart Benton who was
one of the great painters of the early 20th Century. Dealing with Jackson ***'s work,
you don't say this is the work of someone who doesn't know how to paint. You say this
is someone who had insight about what he wanted to do. He had a vision for what a new kind
of art could be like. A lot of organizations would like to pretend that that part isn't
true.
They would like to pretend that you can churn out things that work in the market place on
a regular schedule in a predictable basis but in fact human beings create art work worth
talking, work worth doing, things that we marvel at in an erratic way and it is not
about brainstorming, it is about having the insight to understand where the market is
and where it is going. We are not good at talking about it. We are not good at managing
for it, we are bad at hiring for it but every once in a while an organization comes along
that culturally gets it.
When Howard Schultz was running Starbucks, Howard has insight into the community and
the way they are going to interact with caffeine and a building in a third place, that when
Phil Knight was arrogantly building Nike into this major company, his gut, the insight that
he had was not "Oh I have an idea, let's make sneakers that are orange" he had insight about
what goes on in the mind of a runner or an athlete or a basketball player that is something
we need to get better at producing and thinking about by we are not going to do it by treating
it like a good that comes from a factory.
Braden: So you can talk about getting good at it, obviously our educational system is
not necessarily training people to think creatively or work on problems in an integrated manner
as much as we might like, obviously there is teachers that are working on it.
Seth: You are being way to kind.
Braden: I'm being way to kind.
Seth: Our educational system is intentionally dampening, deadening, eliminating, stamping
out any shred that people have of actually developing these critical skills. Our educational
system is organized, no child left behind test, test, test, SATs, number 2 pencils to
create compliant factory workers and we need to be really angry about that and not give
them a pass.
Braden: So what would you change?
Seth: Well I don't get to change it, right? I don't get to run every school board and
change the way funding works, what I do get to do is deal with kids from 3 o'clock in
the afternoon to 10 o'clock at night. What I do get to do is change the way people apply
for a job or change what jobs people think are important and we need to home school kids
every single afternoon to understand that what is important is to solve interesting
problems and to lead and to connect, and until they start doing that they are going to be
setting themselves up to be a more expensive version of what you can buy in China for half
the price.
Braden: Well that is a definite risk and as we look at our children, as we look at the
future before us, and as we look at some of those interesting problems that are out there
to potentially be solved, what is one interesting problem that you haven't written about yet
that sort of bouncing around in the back of your head that you think is interesting and
the people should explore more?
Seth: Even though I have written 12 books, I'm not a writer, I don't wake up in the morning
and say what book am I going to write now and in fact I'm done writing books and that
the Linchpin is my last book with a traditional publisher and the reason is because this is
my life's work, my life's work is to help people see and understand the biggest shift
of our generations happening right now. We don't need more competence, we don't need
more obedience, we need more innovation and leadership and we need to conquer the fear
in the back of our head.
You know a lot of people who will read your blog would like to be more creative, but a
lot of them want to figure out how to make it a predictable factory driven system, why?
Because they are afraid, they are afraid of failing and the biggest, biggest shortage,
corporate America has is failure. We are not failing often enough. There are many companies
that are proud of the fact they never fail, those companies are a waste, those companies
are going to fade away and die because in times of change the only hope is innovation
and what innovation means is failing on your way to succeeding.
Braden: Right and that is a very important concept, failing on your way to succeeding
because if you look at some of the organizations that people hold up as being very innovative,
Apple for example, Apple has failed several times. If you look at the Motorola ROKR, if
you look at the Apple TV, not huge market successes but they are learning things as
they go along so the Motorola ROKR, what they learn there helps to inform the iPhone. The
things that they learn from the Apple TV are going to likely inform the thing that is coming
next and I'm sure it is coming next but hasn't come next yet.
Seth: But sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't inform anything. Now here is how
I can tell if you are serious, years ago when I come in it had a lot of people in there.
I took aside one of my very best employees and I said "You know I noticed you haven't
had any failures in the last 3 months" he was very proud of himself he said "yeah."
I said "if you don't start failing, you are fired" and the only way I'm going to tell
if a company is serious about innovation is how many people do you fire for not failing.
Until you start firing people for not failing, you are not serious.
Braden: Well that is a very good point I think to end on, again this has been Braden Kelley
of BloggingInnovation.com here with Seth Godin author of Linchpin and 11 other books.
Seth: Thanks.