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It's all about agile innovation; all innovation should be agile.
Innovation is about doing things differently. I hear about convergence.
Convergence is boring. Convergence means that every car
is designed in the same a wind tunnel. Have you noticed they all
look the same. Divergence is about doing things differently,
to serve customers in a special way.
Of course, if you do it well, all your competitors will converge where you have
gone.
And then you will have to move again and keep someone new. So you're always
diverging: you are always pushing away from the others.
Did you know that benchmarking has of course been taught in business schools for
years.
You benchmark against the best, to see how you rank
with your competitors. But I tell you this: benchmarking
is a very fast way for all of the businesses
to jump off the same
cliff to disaster. In fact, benchmarking led directly
to the subprime crisis. Why? Because all
the institutions say well, they all have their own board meetings and risk
management meetings, they all got out their computers and looked at what their
competitors are doing.
And they say 'Well, we're just lending on the same basis as everyone else in the
industry,
we are perfectly benchmarked and therefore we must be safe.
It's a huge risk.
It's no innovation, all innovation must be
you benchmark and then you decide 'Go and do it different.'
And that is the exciting opportunity. By the way, where do you get your best ideas?
Put your hands up if you get your best ideas in meetings
at work. Well, there must be someone.
Put your hands up if you spend most of your time
in meetings at work.
So wonderful, very interesting, I wonder what you do, do. Put your hands up if you
get your best ideas at home
I wonder where you are, what are you doing at home?
Can I ask? Put your hands up if you get your best ideas in the shower
at work or
at home? Shower? One.
Put your hands up if you get them watching TV. Well doing nothing.
Put your hands up if you get your best ideas in the middle of the night so you keep
piece a paper by your bed? I keep one
I keep paper and pen by my bed every night.
I get my best ideas at three in the morning
and if I can't find a piece a paper I lie awake all night
and i still can't remember them. Ok,
So we understand something about human nature. Leaders
lead with vision. Vision come from
ideas, so where we
get our leadership from, is from home, you're telling me.
Correct? You form your leadership
at home and you bring it into the workplace. These things are very
important.
Let me tell you this: you want to be agile. You want to be persistent.
You want to be sustainable. You want to be able to succeed. I tell you,
you only need one great idea
each year, as a leader, to transform
the whole of your business. Right?
Because it was probably take you three years to develop it.
One great idea and where's that
idea going to come from? As leaders often our greatest
task is to take time out of leadership. That's why coming here
is important. It's why we, we distance ourselves from the work
So we can be agile in our thinking. Because when we are in meetings all day
long
all that happens is that we become part of the system. We cannot
innovate. We cannot change. We cannot get new vision.
So we create space, we say, 'I will not be in tomorrow,
and don't ask where I am. My blackberry is turned off.' Let me say this:
you cannot innovate if you are connected to your blackberry.
I don't think you can have a great idea when you are online.
Yes, you might find an idea that you can then think about but your idea,
the genius that is you,
will not come from reading someone else's website.
It will come in that flash
of inspiration. As you are thinking,
you are cooking the meal, whatever it is, something happens
inside you and you get so excited you know you have to write this down.
Because this is the key to solving a massive problem
so we need to take time to think and that's why we love wild ideas.
Wild ideas provoke us, they challenge us, they take us
out of where we are. The best ideas are powered by passion.
If you want to innovate focus on the need, focus on the challenge,
the problem, the customer, and you'll find motivation.
If you only focus on cutting costs you will rarely find innovation.
I find very few people who love to cut costs.
I find lots of people who love to make things better.
Of course we have to cut costs, but cutting costs can be a bit depressing
you can have all kinds of innovative ideas about cutting costs,
some may succeed and others may not.
But actually, it's about something else. It's about discovering
a fresh way of thinking about an idea.