Welcome to another episode of the corporate explorer series brought to you by was okay what follows today is an in person recording i did when we launch the corporate explorer field book over in london with andy bins and many of the coauthors of that book.
In this episode we have in person interviews and i want to tell you before we start that episode and indeed that event was brought to you by wazuku which helps large organizations create effective sustainable innovation ecosystems that accelerate efficiency gains and new value growth. It does this through intelligent enterprise software that connects and harnesses the power of employees, suppliers, startups, universities, and the unique Wazuku crowd of over 700, 000 plus global problem solvers.
Wazuku calls this Connected Collective Intelligence. You can find Wazuku at wazuku. com. Let's get started. Ideate, Incubate, Scale. It begins with ideas, and one of the most effective ways to use ideas. To generate ideas is with a process known as CDI. We are joined by one of the globe's experts on design of CDI and execution of CDI. And she's working in the field now after working as a consultant. So she's getting scar tissue actually out there in the real world.
We are joined today by Bea Schofield. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to have you and great to meet you because yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And thanks for your support. You've. Responsible for maybe doubling the audience. I'm sure that's
not true.
I'm delighted to meet and I'm delighted to talk to you about this idea because many of us get this wrong. We get the design wrong. We get the refinement wrong. We even get the putting it out there. What this CDI is about in the first place. So maybe let's talk about CDI, what it is and then. We'll share what makes a good challenge design.
Absolutely. So I can start a little bit about what the sort of a good challenge looks like. I suppose why it's an important way to generate ideas because we all, and we've actually just been talking about this with Andy often come up against the sort of paradox of innovation. How do we give people the freedom to come up with their own ideas? whilst putting enough sort of boundaries around it that we can actually find something we can do something with.
It's sort of similar to when Andy talked about hunting zones, that sort of premise that you need to bound innovation enough whilst allowing for that creativity. And part of this process is really to ensure that you can do that successfully. So how do we identify an important problem? And I think that's really at the crux of this and then frame that in a way. That we aren't just limiting it to the people in that room.
We're actually thinking a lot more broadly, allowing for a lot more diversity into the process in order to ensure that we can tap into that real long tail. So again, it's not about pay grade. It's not about experience. It's about how do we bring. Different lenses to a problem and allow people to engage with that, bring their own self and their own identity and their own experience to that in order to generate the ideas which can actually get somewhere in an organization.
I think it's important what you said and we'll have these sequenced in a way where Andy will talk about hunting zones because firstly you got to understand. Well, where am I hunting? Where do I not wanted to go? Because so many times you see with these challenges where it's like, oh, carte blanche, do whatever you want, but that's wrong because you'll end up getting something that a the organization is no capability of achieving or be.
Nobody's any interest in doing it or maybe it's not even lucrative but you share five traits of what makes a good challenge. I thought we'd jump straight into that. This is what you call lasso. Yes,
exactly. Came from the sort of American lasso in the problem. Thanks to Alf who, who really sort of looked at this a lot in the sort of early 2000s around how do we design what we think of as the perfect challenge. Of course, there's no such thing as a perfect problem. But what this is really designed to do is give it to anyone to say, how do I actually continuously reframe a problem till I'm happy with it? To the point that actually we can begin to allow ideas to come in.
So the first is really about limiting the scope of the problem. Often this is where, to that paradox around innovation, things begin to go really wrong. Because people don't want to put any boundaries in fear that it will limit creativity. And actually, we recognize that innovation is a process, and we have to time bound things. So if we can limit the scope enough, so we're not saying, Okay, how do we actually, you know, really solve a situation?
Sustainability versus how do we better recycle our uniforms and we're beginning to put some boundaries around that and give people time to be able to contribute, but it's not going to take them years and years and years. And I think this is what we forget in the innovation processes. How do we make sure that people are able to participate in a way according to what timeframes are right for them?
So I think that's really an important point about limiting the scope, both to ensure you get better ideas, but to be conscious of the people who are also contributing to that challenge. So
when we come back, you and I will do a longer session, but for today, we'll keep rolling and maybe we'll move straight on to A, which is the actionable aspect. Yeah.
So again, where people go often wrong is I want ideas, but what do I actually want to do with them? So we've got to make sure that in writing to the challenge, we've got that they're actually actionable. We can do something with that. And again, you might think about, is this something that I can do? Within the next year, within the next two years, but again, we're not out in the ether doing something which isn't something which should be acted upon.
And then that really comes down to, can we be quite specific about what we're asking for? Again, Quite similar to limited in scope, but actually we want to be able to articulate what we want from that answer because especially when you're looking at people outside of your organization, or even inside your organization, because we're not all monoliths, we don't all think the same. What is it we're actually looking for?
And this is works for two reasons, because what we want people to do is understand when it comes to evaluating a solution. When I was asked, I have to make it adhere to this set of criteria, this is where I went wrong. It's not a personal rejection of your idea. So I really want to make sure that it's specific in what we're asking for, so people can do what's needed in the time frame afforded to them. And so those are really the starting points for challenges.
Now, The two supported and owned, which are the S and the O, arguably, I'd say they're more important. Even if you had the perfect challenge, it was so well designed, you thought, gosh, I'm going to get ideas from all over the globe. We all know who's going to ultimately kill your idea, and it's your organization. So you need to ensure that this is, you in line with your strategic direction.
So you can draw a parallel between this sort of microcosm, which is an idea and the direction your organization is headed, and ensuring that it is owned by. Because a strategy, of course, we all play into a strategy. We don't all own the strategy and we need someone or a small group of people to really say, okay, I've got this. I'm willing to go beyond the discussion of what some ideas are and actually get it to a point of scale.
So I think collectively you're ensuring that you've got a framework through which any problem can be solved. In order to get to an outcome versus just generating ideas for ideas sake. . Aidan McCullen: I thought about the the S and the O. So supported and owned. And if we later on, we're going to talk to Alexander Pett about the idea of communicating and selling your idea, et cetera, getting buy in from the organization, but before that you can see why the book is laid out the way it is.
There's a manifesto from the organization, which really articulates specifically to the S of the lasso. What the hunting zone should be. So where, and then that informs you with a CDI of what type of challenge do I do in order to achieve those and look for the, look for solutions to certain problems that the organization might have. So you can see how this is a lovely system that all works together. But oftentimes.
We as corporate explorers will go, Oh, I need air cover, but air cover is a very broad term, but this helps you understand what exactly type of air cover you need, like this supported and owned is it's not ownership by one person, which is helpful in organization. But you need everybody to get behind that idea. And that is often where we fall down so much in corporate innovation.
Absolutely. And I think with the, with owning the problem versus owning the solution or even the idea, the idea is bound to change and it's morphs as it goes through. various processes. Relatively speaking, even if it's still quite broad, to get someone really invested in that problem is of utmost importance, because that's going to be the longevity that, that sort of takes it through. And ultimately, it's what the customer cares about the most. Are we actually solving their problem?
So if you find someone who is invested into solving that problem, and actually helps with the buying of the ideas which will be generated in response to it. So I think that's again a really important part because of course, to say a lot of this comes down to individuals, it comes down to buy in. So make someone own that problem with you, get them as passionate, get them as bought in, because people are more likely to buy into that than they are your idea.
Frankly, sometimes because they didn't come up with the
idea themselves. Very rarely do. But isn't that I have to admit this, I say this on the show all the time. I failed on this before because I wanted the credit and a guy, very early guy, great mentor of mine, a guy who I had on the show, Jeffrey J. Fox, nothing to as a Michael J. Fox. He has this series of books about what he called rain making. So it was sales and he said, you need to be a credit maker, not a credit taker. That is so hard as a corporate explorer. You've done all the work.
You've brought this baby to life. You've gone through all the challenges. And you have it here and now that it's looking somewhat successful, you almost have to hand it over to somebody that I really struggle with that. I don't know about
you. I can completely see that, but I often think of it almost sort of the Trojan horse is that, you know, you send it in. When you create a challenge, you are defining to a degree where the ideas, what the ideas will come from. So you co define this challenge area, you know, some of those solutions. And often I'm not saying this as a way to navigate it, but your idea will be somewhere buried.
In that kind of in a response to that challenge now In my experience, the most effective way for that idea to go anywhere is to ensure the person goes, Oh, or people who are really owning , that challenge, that problem area. Okay, wow, I really, I was the person who played a role in making this idea come about, and suddenly it doesn't become the fight.
Over that individual ownership you are invested in a problem which you own as an organization you might be invested in as people you're certainly not limited to that.
But sometimes that person is probably the worst person ever in your idea they were the worst critic they were the. Biggest laggard who dragged you back and you're kind of going, Oh my God, I have to give this person credit, but that, but that is part of the job. And I really wanted to emphasize that. I'd love to share figure 7. 2 from the book, we're going to show this on the screen and I'd love you to take our audience through this and step by step.
And you're only seeing this book fresh off the press as well, which is great. Most of our guests today have. The first time seeing the book. Right. So I'm honored that that's the case. Oh wow. Lucky you, and I'm sure you're seeing this for the first time in the book as well, so feel free to look at that diagram. Yeah, I'm,
for the first time I'm reminding myself is, thankfully I've done a few presentations on it in the past, , but you know, a lot of good to be reminded of the process. But, I can certainly talk through the steps and I think again that the most important isn't about memorizing what happens. It's really about just thinking of this as a process and actually a lot of what we've been thinking about is corporate exploration about new ventures.
But you can utilize this process to improve existing, parts of your process or even when you're in that scaling journey. How am I actually refining it? It's taking those big weighty problems and actually determining how can I, break those down into more specific challenges. So what we think of as these portable units of work and prioritize what's going to be important.
And actually again, getting your stakeholders to really buy into this and make them their process as well, which I think is really key. So determining what the challenge looks like in light of these five traits. And actually what we see happening here is people might write their challenge statement and they go, you know what, I need to refine it a little bit more. And so you use it as a bit of a scoring matrix.
You go, okay, now I just question it slightly differently and I'll, I'll change it there. And that helps with defining those challenges. Now it comes to selecting who do you want to participate? And of course your natural inclination is let's get some ideas from people in our organization because they're a valued resource and we want to engage people and that's where we're going to get ideas.
But then also let's recognize, some do this afterwards, some do this in parallel, is let's ask the outside world and let's position this in a way And this comes down to the skill of actually writing this challenge. I've got to credit, Eugene in his ability, he was the, editor of this book and his ability to really write these challenges in a way which doesn't identify the organization or often abstracts the problem to a degree.
You wouldn't even know what problem you're solving because it's just, positioned in a different light, but actually then determining who's the right audience. Can I bring these ideas together, often finding that I'm combining various ones to be able to evaluate.
Now the good thing about the LASSO framework, it both works as a challenge definition, but it's also great for thinking about the solution and the evaluation criteria, because you also want the ideas to be limited enough in scope, actionable, specific, supported and owned, and then actually take them through that process of development before they are integrated back in.
Now in some instances, particularly when you're thinking about the more incremental changes that's easier, of course, when we're thinking about new ventures, that integration is a potential sticking point, but you then are actually back into the integration. Have we got the right people? In order to actually execute and really realize the value. So as I say, a great way, whether it's an incremental change, it's potentially about a new venture. It's even actually helping to reframe your idea.
You just feel it's a good repetitive process. Yeah, it works. It
definitely works. And it's so helpful.
I think having a process like that to make sure you haven't missed anything is so important because I think When people hear even the role corporate explorer or intrapreneur or corporate innovator or head of innovation, they think it's all creative and fun, but there's a huge amount of left brain work here and that right brain absolutely essential, but sometimes, and I'm guilty of this as well, you're, you find this other work a little bit boring because it's
very systematic, it's paint by numbers almost, and that's not the way you work. It's absolutely crucial. And I don't know how you've integrated that into your own life and your own work, but certainly it was something I wasn't too fond of, particularly when I had to fit the way I worked and the way I thought into the way the organization did. So there was this kind of battle of the old and the new.
And I think there's creating this space to we talk about left brain, right brain, how can we be creative, but also, you know, think within structures and systems. And actually I think one way to think about this process is that you find the creativity within the various parameters. So you think about challenge definition, how you choose to write a challenge or a problem statement, or even generate ideas in response to that, that can all be avenues for creativity.
So what you want to be able to do is say, here's my framework. These are where I'm able to play and be creative and think about how might that problem be applicable beyond, energy into manufacturing, into healthcare and allow you yourself that sort of creative space, whilst also ensuring that we ultimately have in mind is that outcome, because none of this really, makes any sense until we've created value for our customers and therefore our businesses.
Ensuring that you can have creativity within. Various parameters
and it feels, doesn't it feel very fuzzy and warm when you have all these ideas, et cetera. And one of the things with innovation is you have no currency other than a lot of goodwill from people. You don't have much power in the organization. Usually people in that role are new and they're trying to build their own personal brand when inside the organization. And people will give you oh, the new head of innovation. They'll give you a conversation.
But whether it's real or not, you don't know half the time. And I say that because you really don't have much power or authority. Mm. And this then fast forwards to, you've done your challenge and it comes to the end and you have to start whittling down into that funnel and you're kind of going, Oh, if I didn't do my work earlier on in the hunting zones, I'm in trouble now because this informs this, but you introduce a brilliant tool here at the , prioritization grid.
And again, I'm going to show it on the screen here. And let's tell our audience about this because this is the way you do it in an impartial way that takes you out of the equation.
And I think that's that's a good point. And a lot of this is around to your point empowerment. Now we have, of course, individual agency, but we understand the parameters. We're not out in the marketplace as solo founders, we're confined to a degree by what our organization and our culture and our leadership. supports. So what we want to be able to do to anyone who has the, decision making capacity to help ideas go through is give them the tools to be able to do so.
So even when you've got through the actual, have I written the right challenge, it's then balancing and recognizing that sort of complex balance of today's problems versus tomorrow's problems. It's similar to the McKinsey Horizon Framework. We recognize that we need to be in horizon one and horizon two. And when we think of these problems, they're a variation of the problem that can sit in horizon one and similarly horizon two.
So you want to give leadership the ability and the framework to say, okay, we need to be solving high impact problem because we've got to keep shareholders happy. We've got to keep our CEO happy, but we also recognize that, the trends are pointing us direction that our existing business is, everything has a time frame on it. So how do we create that exploration?
And I often think if we begin to think about the do now, the 12 months, let's solve those problems, But we also don't forget about the do later problems. So we say, okay, there's doesn't necessarily need to be a trade off.
It needs to recognize we've got to do some problems now, some later, and actually make sure that you planned it in a coherent, systematic way in the same way you would your investment portfolio spend or, which incremental change, what am I actually going to invest in this year? And this is just a good tool to say.
Can this actually help leaders with saying, I don't need to choose one or the other, I need to be able to see what I've got, and work out I might choose to solve that problem in six months time, this problem today, because it's really burning. And that might be a two years away problem, but I'm going to keep my eye on it. And I'm going to carry on watching it as it morphs, it changes in response to the world outside, wherever it is you're
working. Brilliant, and have some type of way to communicate that to say you have the people who've come up with that idea. to be able to tell them that I think that's so important is not often left. Oh, let's just like on they'll be
fine. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that does tend to happen just because we're not solving this problem. Or we're not taking this idea forward today doesn't mean that we're not watching because a big part of all of us is you know, in the complexity of achieving the how do I innovate for today and tomorrow problem is that we have to be able to have an eye on focus and it is still here. I haven't forgotten about it.
But I'm focusing on this problem, this idea now, but we're getting there and it all takes time.
Brilliant. And last one for you. And again, I'm going to come back and you and I, will have a chat and I'd love to hear some of the examples of from the field for you. But the last one is to select the channels. So when do I decide? It's an internal only one. When do I decide to bring in some suppliers or some customers, for example, because that mix is essential to your
output. Yeah, so some organizations do this differently. Some will choose to engage their employees first, get their view and then say, Okay, we didn't quite get what we wanted internally. So let's go outside. Some, which I think the preferred approach is, Go out to different audiences at the same time and see what you get, because that cross versalization of the ideas and response to the challenge are often really good as well.
Now in order to do that effectively, what you need to have is a substantially different enough challenge that, you know, what you would let, you know, it doesn't say there's airing dirty laundry, but there's an element of, , saying, , the problem in your more conventional sense So, you also have a choice there when it comes to selecting the challenges. I've got this problem area. When I break it down, I might outsource different parts to different audiences.
I also may choose to make some of it anonymous. And some of it I will have my brand because there's strengths attributed to both. Brilliant and
that stuff that we'll dig into much more next time we come together. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to Bea where can people find
you? I'm on LinkedIn. So that's probably the easiest I could talk about this for hours. So if anyone wants to talk about challenge driven innovation, please do reach out.
And you can listen back again in the future, Bea and I are going to come together and do much more deeper dive on this Bea. Schofield, business Model Innovation Lead at Lloyds Bank. Thanks for joining us. Thank
you for having me.