Ep. 202 - Laurel Lau, Founder of SixAtlas and Author of Interplay: How to become a top innovator

Laurel Lau is the founder of the innovation consultancy Six Atlas and author of the book Interplay: How to become a top innovator. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder talks with Laurel about her experiences helping manufacturing companies innovate, the impact of the Corona virus on global supply chain, and what might actually happen after disruption going forward.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started.

Interview Transcript

Brian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. Today we have Laurel Lau. She is a founder of the innovation consultancy Six Atlas and author of the new book Interplay: How to become a top innovator. Welcome to the show. 

Laurel Lau: Thanks for having me Brian. 

Brian Ardinger: Hey. I'm excited to have you on the show. You are living in Lisbon right now. We are taping this March 22nd so Corona virus has locked everybody down. What brought you to Lisbon? What kind of work are you doing in the world of innovation there? 

Laurel Lau: I am helping a Chinese company with innovation program. They bring international brands into China and help them sell there. They've worked with P & G and Unilever back in the days, but I was helping them with building up the innovation program, so help them to become more systematic in it. 

Brian Ardinger: I wanted to have you on, because you've got a new book out called Interplay, and you're talk a lot about the culture of innovation and that. Let's start by telling the audience about the book. 

Laurel Lau: The book is a result of me having experienced startup, working in startup and also doing a lot of coaching for startup founders. As I've gone through my journey, I realized that the way that we approach collaboration, yes we've been taught how to make it into process, and make it a little bit more systematic, but at the same time, there's a huge communication aspect and relationship aspect that's been missing for me to see that people are using these skillsets to be able to develop sustainable solutions.

Brian Ardinger: So what are some of the core skills that you think make an innovator more effective than others? 

Laurel Lau: Let's bring it back to like where we're at right now. Everyone is social distancing. Everyone is quarantining. The whole economy is collapsing at this point. How do we know how often these type of crisis will happen in the world? I think it's being able to have foresight of seeing what kind of dangers our world is heading into and having that larger perspective is really, really important. One aspect that I bring CEO's to be able to understand is to understand the daily nuance problems that people might be having, might be reflecting a larger issue, that if you use a right communication skills to get to the bottom of it, you'll be able to unravel it much easier.

Brian Ardinger: Unpack that a little bit. Can you give a story or example about how somebody actually effectively does that?

Laurel Lau: A lot of times when I head into a company and do consulting, first I'll do as a reality check and get a lot of interviews done. Read a lot of their reports. Go to a lot of their meetings, show out the factories and understand their product and the services that they provide. What happens during that time when I'm trying to understand more is being able to connect the dots. A lot of times during this part of reality check, people might be revealing half the story, 10% of the story, but as consultants going in asking more questions and seeing what we're seeing, there's a gradual development of a framework that connects the dots of the insights that's been developed. Being able to see that, is there an important, because that helps us see where the leadership and culture has been locked at. And so even though we're implementing new technology, new systems, why are they not working so that we bring it up to a level where we're collaborating at a greater speed and effectiveness. 

Brian Ardinger: Is it an innovation readiness assessment that you go in and try to determine the organization's adaptability? 

Laurel Lau: That is definitely part of it. In working and allowing people to fill in this form and give us all the information and go through the interview aspect also, we're are able to collect that information and be able to understand the industry problems as long as have the corporation problems. So many of these organizations on super complex and have complicated way of compensation and motivating their staff and to be able to sift through the noise and be able to hear truly where the next one or two steps organization need to make in the next three to five years is super important to be able to get that information. Because at the end of the day, the employees are collecting a lot of the right information. They are the eyes, ears of the company, and so they should be the ones who are reflecting what they want in a corporation to help the company to be a lot more competitive.

Brian Ardinger: Where our company's falling down the most are the particular trends that you see or different activities that corporations do that inhibit innovation 

Laurel Lau: In every industry, it would be a little bit different. So I'm much more focused in companies that have the factory aspect of manufacturing. What Chinese companies in manufacturing had to adapt to is the digital strategies and also be able to strengthen their supply chain, which is super helpful last year to be able to help them be stronger in facing the crisis of COVID-19 this year. 

Brian Ardinger: That brings up an interesting point with regard to culture. You're living in Lisbon right now. You've worked with Chinese companies and you work with American companies. What are some of the cultural differences or different ways different companies or cultures approach innovation?

Laurel Lau: And I think it's important to understand the local culture and the company culture itself. For one of the clients we had, which is a Chinese company, it's hard for you to change all the different aspects, but you know that the level of culture change that they're willing to make and that's comfortable for them, and that's right for them. So it's important to understand the local culture. And. What's important for their innovation itself. And so there are different types of innovation styles that's right for different innovation strategies. So to be able to understand what proportion of your company's innovation strategies are more radical or just incremental, the different levels of innovation that's required for the organization to succeed. It's important to understand what level it is and also what area they lie in.