Transforming Ideas into Action with Stuart Laws

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next up on the corporate explorer series we have stuart laws stuart is defense innovation unit assistant head for the military in the uk stuart welcome to the show thank you for having me it's great to have you man. We've talked to Bea Scholfield about how to design a program etc. But the second oldest organization in the world, along with the Catholic church is the military and you're in charge of innovating within the military, but you've used.

The frameworks outlined in the corporate explorer field book to great effect and i'd love to fast forward a little bit and get to the human side of things that you've done so brilliantly but let's talk about first about how you've implemented. Challenge driven innovation and then we'll get on to those human sides

okay yeah so challenge driven innovation for us is is a 180 degrees switch for what we were doing previously. So defense has an amazing history of generating ideas, but then we get stuck because like with every organization, you can generate the ideas, but that's really hard to actually do something with them. So challenge driven innovation was an opportunity for us to flip 180 degrees and actually go to business units who've got a problem, teach them how to frame their problem.

So that then everybody's got the great ideas can then be a little bit more scoped and bounded around where the ideas are going. That also then means that we get ideas which are more likely to be useful, but equally the team's responsible for implementing those ideas. don't have that allergic reaction of not invented here and all that sort of stuff that we were experiencing previously.

So by giving them and empowering them to run a challenge, that means that they get ideas that are expected, they get ideas that they could do something with, and they're the right team to take the idea forward and implement it as well, which then means everybody's given the ideas, then don't get as frustrated because they're not waiting years to hear something or if they hear anything at all. And they can also see that the right team have got it. It's been assessed objectively.

It's not just somebody's thought that actually, no, we don't want to do that. There's a reason why they've been rejected or they've been accepted or actually it's been progressed and then didn't get anywhere. So it suddenly becomes a much more friendly experience rather than this black and white corporate experience, which is computer says no, most of the time the typical way a corporation of any type, not just a government governmental body.

Would do this would be like, we're going to have an innovation session. We're going to have a hackathon, et cetera. It's just blind post it notes or build over 24 hours, . What I loved about what you talked about there is that you start with, here's the biggest challenges that we have. This in a way helps people could just focus on what Andy talked about, these hunting zones.

And therefore people can actually focus and also you know what type of teams you want to pick so say for example there's a prize up for grabs i want to be on that team that wins the cash if it's cash or i want the prestige i want the reputation of being the winner etc and i thought about how that also then you've brought across, outside the military into partners, but also into then other governmental bodies. Innovation is more about joining the dots than it is about what it is you produce.

And, we've run cross sector innovation challenges with the Royal Navy and offshore oil and gas. We've looked at a whole bunch of auto companies, we've looked at satellite companies and, platform companies and universities bringing them together with a problem statement is a much bigger positive catalyst for ideas than just going, oh, tell us about your ideas. It's very bland and boring and everyone's done it to death over the last 50, 60 years, however long.

But being able to personify it and create a challenge statement that people can emotionally connect with gets you so much more. And as people realize you're not going to give them requirements document, you really are looking for how they're going to solve the problem. They suddenly become more energetic and more passionate about it. So you end up with this kids in the sweet shop approach.

rather than your consultants and your big partners multi corporate companies ticking off the checkboxes of what they're going to deliver and how much they're going to charge you Because suddenly they don't know and they've got to work with other people In order to work out what the solution is because you haven't told them what it is So therefore they don't have the checkbox approach So suddenly you get much more honest conversations going as well and

then suddenly you know well, actually you would only spend any money here because All those things already exist. We just need to figure out how we're going to use those. And we've done that with at least one, one challenge with the Army, where we found that everything was on the Army's wishlist at that time was available. They just didn't know because the solutions existed in companies that didn't work with defense.

But then we found them when we did the discovery phase and some of the industry engagement activity is like, Oh, great. You don't need to run a challenge now because everything's there. So suddenly you've then also met the acceleration desire as well, because some of the senior offices want an answer today or yesterday, and you go, actually in this case, here you go. You just need to buy it and paint it green and make sure it does the job you need it to do, and away you go.

Whereas with other challenges, you obviously then have that extended period where you've got to do your prototyping and build a product which you can bring to the marketplace. And for us, the challenge driven innovation allows us to do that. Because you can set your boundary and go, actually at the end of this period of time, the product must be available for us to procure.

Now it might not be Defence that buys it first, but our partner who's here, who is not in Defence, has a much more agile procurement system and they have a shared problem. And we've teamed up in order to do this. Yeah, and I think that goes back to the older times when we used to do, public sector led the way on innovation. Everyone thinks private industry lead innovation now, but I think if we're going to be honest, it's a collaboration.

There is no one organization or one sector that can really lead innovation in any particular area. If you don't have that collaboration from the beginning, you're going to miss something or you're just going to end up with something which doesn't really meet the need for everybody. It's such a brilliant way to create. One of the greatest studies i heard about with a guy called Ben Bensaou on the show and he has a book called "build to innovate" and he talked about phillips.

When philips were in the UK, they had a team of people that went out and lived with people to see how they use their appliances, etc. This is when they were appliance company. They're now a health care company and one of the things they spotted in the UK, was the water types.

So remember, you boil a cup of tea and there'd be like this film on top of your tea, this kind of and you'd scrape it away and they'd see these people scraping away this film with a spoon and then they were like, Oh, brainwave. Because they were living with them seeing them they put in that little filter on the cattle they were the guys who brought in that and then they had this kind of head start on everybody else and everybody else starts doing it.

But it came to mind when you're talking about this that you co create with your suppliers, you co create with people who have capabilities that you don't have. And by you constantly tapping in with them, you have this public private enterprise in real time, building a product that has a customer at the end of it. It's a no brainer really. And it needs a change in mindset more than actually a change in structure.

Absolutely to some extent part of that mindset is coming from the way that I work with My team, we very frequently go that's clearly the right thing to do But just because it's the right thing to do doesn't mean you're going to land it So therefore you start the momentum and the agreement is We're going to do this until somebody says no or stop at some point, we're going to get to the point of no return, by which point it's too late for anybody to stop us anyway, and it's

surprising how much you can achieve when you have that sort of mindset, especially in an organization which is indoctrinated to resist change because everyone just thinks you've been permissioned to go because you're doing it. Therefore, you must have permission to do it or you wouldn't be doing it. That's so important. And that's something not just in governmental organizations.

And there is obviously for good reasons risk aversion in many organizations but it's this perceived oh i can't do this perceived we talk about that last ceiling this is like that last igloo all around you and you can't actually feel you can go beyond your certain boundaries. What were your whole approach to your team is. Go through the boundary until you're told no.

I want to bring that back then, because one of key pieces of work that you've done, and I said, I want you to get to this because I absolutely love what you do here is you apply marketing personas to the type of people that you have to go to seek permission or perhaps to sell the idea to. And I think this is so understated and so important for a corporate explorer.

Absolutely. So I went through a period of time when I was learning how to do things and how to run a team and then how to make change and the early years in defense in particular, suggesting a change was always hit with that brick wall. And it's like, okay, but it's quite clearly the right thing to do. Why don't I see it? And it's that whole, how can I get the person who said no to understand the value of what's being proposed? And it's like, how do I get them on the side?

And I had a friend who was in marketing. And she mentioned that they have stakeholder personas. And if you're going to go and sell a product to a particular demographic, you have to understand them, what they think and all the rest of it. So that you almost take away their ability to think about not buying it. And I thought how does that work?

So we sat down and we had this conversation around stakeholder personas and how marketing used them and, how Tesco's and the likes of that have been used. done it to the point where they can stick something at the end of the aisle and you'll pick it up without thinking. And it's bringing that whole mindset into, okay, innovation is probably the only part of business.

where you still have to seek those permissions and get that personal buy in and the rest of it, whereas everything else is driven by a business case and the money's cost saving return on investment and all those sorts of things, which are fairly simple to set out. Getting someone to agree to something which is new and different outside the comfort zone, you've got to then understand that individual.

And I might need three or four senior execs that I've got to get on side, but they all like to receive things differently. They all think differently. They've all got different priorities. But I need a yes from all of them. So I figured this was probably worth a try. So I did my first set of stakeholder personas and I worked out what made people tick, what was important to them, whether they liked a written brief or a verbal brief, and all those sorts of things.

And I just attacked each four of them. Separately based on what I've built up from the stakeholder personas and then got a yes from all four of them. Where I think previously I would have probably got a no from all four of them without them even thinking about it. If I just did it in the usual way of here's a submission, this is what we're going to do, this is why it's important. Do you agree? Yes or no?

They would have looked at it and gone, no. Whereas if you build it and present it in a way where suddenly they feel an emotional connection to it. Then suddenly is there idea and they want you to take it forward and that's really powerful your doing them a favor now before is that away and that's one of the big challenges with innovation work is that you don't really have any currency you don't have any power really.

You're seeing is the person always asking for favors and this flips the bottle which i absolutely love. The last thing i want to know what was that if you go through an ideation session and you do your challenge driven innovation. Sometimes you don't come out with. The desired output you wanted perhaps you wanted some solution to a problem. But you gotta look at the bright side here in that there's always assets in the ashes. You have created a collaboration.

You have different people from different departments now speaking to each other. Maybe they've created alliances. But one of stories you shared with me was the BT story and how sometimes somebody somewhere in your pipeline in your supply chain has a solution to your problem but without this way of communicating and finding them you're never gonna actually find that solution.

Yeah, and that was from the high altitude intelligence challenge that we run with the UK Stratcom in Marsat. Joint Maritime Security Center and the General Alliance Authority and that was around disaster relief things. And one of the question sets that come through the challenge was around what, how do we provide communications to first responders going into a disaster area because there's been an earthquake or a tsunami, whatever it might be. Therefore, the infrastructure has been wiped out.

And we quickly realized that actually, What we wanted was another payload to go on the stratospheric platform, which had to be able to provide communications. And then one of the companies that came in to our industry engagement stuff was BT. And it's like, we've got. We've got the plans for an antenna, but we didn't think it would be financially viable, so we shelved it. But now Defence has come forward to these other partners, going, We want to be able to do the following things.

We know that if we can work with the right platform provider, we can give you a persistent antenna to provide 5G coverage in a 100 mile area from one payload. And it's like, that's amazing, let's do that. Oh, by the way, we've got this guy from Kingston University over here, who's Got a parachute system, which will save the expensive payload. If something goes wrong, whereas normally with stratospheric systems, you'd have to write them off if something went wrong, they just crash and burn.

And suddenly BT had something, didn't think it was viable. You've got a platform company, you've got the ability to do it and understand how it all fit together. And then you've got this single guy from Kingston university. Who's got a way of saving the bit we've really invested in and we want to reuse again. Yeah. And that's the dream. And then BT are now rolling that out across the UK and hard to reach areas so that people have 5G coverage where they wouldn't normally have had 5G coverage.

The great axiom of innovation it happens at the intersections when people come together and you've seen this you've lived it as well. Stuart for people who want to find you where is the best place to reach out to you. So probably the easiest way to find me is either on LinkedIn or I've got my own coaching consultancy as well for innovation, which is Idea Shadow Coaching Limited and just find me there. Defence Innovation Unit Assistant Head Stuart Laws. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much.

I hope you enjoyed that yet another in person session of the corporate explorer from this book behind me the corporate explorer feel book. Highly recommended we're going systematically through that book chapter by chapter with each of the co authors. Series is brought to you by Wazoku, Wazoku 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 Wazoku crowd of over 700, 000 plus global problem solvers. Wazoku calls this connected collective intelligence, and you can find out more about that software and how Wazoku can help your organization at wazoku. com