154: Kumar Mehta: There will always be someone who will listen

154: Kumar Mehta: There will always be someone who will listen

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

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Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, today I’m excited because I get to talk and present to you somebody who really gets into one of the things that I have a passion for, and that’s innovation. Kumar Mehta grew up in Bombay, India and went to the University of Iowa for his doctoral degree in Pharmaceutical Socio economics. The first thing he noticed when he arrived besides how friendly Iowans are was that there were likely more people that lived on his street in Bombay then in the entire city of Iowa City. His father was a doctor, an accomplished surgeon, who spent half his professional career working for free the other half to support his family this taught Kumar at an early age to give to society.

Kumar had a broad variety of careers. His education and early work was in pharmaceuticals from there he spent almost 14 years in the technology industry working at Microsoft. From there he was CEO of a large data analytics company and now is in his fourth career writing, speaking and thinking about innovation. He believes that innovation is one of the constants that has enhanced human life since the beginning of time and is committed to providing knowledge that enhances the rate of innovation. In addition to his focus on innovation, Kumar serves on the board of the Committee for Children, the nation’s largest nonprofit focused on social and emotional learning for children. He also serves as a senior research fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for the Digital Future.

Kumar lives in Seattle with his wife Palvi and plays more golf than any human should, though he thinks it’s not enough. She is a Seattle tech CFO. His son is pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Chicago and his daughter also from the University of Chicago is in Oak teaching middle school math as part of Teach for America. Kumar Mehta, are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Kumar Mehta:   Yes, absolutely. It’s great to be here and thanks for having me here.

Jim Rembach:   Well, I’m really excited to have you on the show because I the work that you’ve been doing on this particular topic is something that I have a passion for myself and I love bringing out folks like you who really made some headway in how we can all do a better job at innovating. I’ve given our legion a little bit about you, but can you tell us what your current passion is so that we can get to know you even better?

Kumar Mehta:   My current passion is removing misunderstandings, fallacies, removing all the cloud and the uncertainty around innovation and trying to really cut to get to what is innovation and how can companies innovate. The guiding principle behind all the work I do is that when companies innovate all of our lives get better and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do. If organizations, nonprofits, for-profits, big companies, small companies if they just understand the foundation or building blocks of innovation how innovation can happen how it has happened from the beginning of time that’s the only way that all of our lives will get enhanced. Whether there’s innovations in pharmaceuticals, whether there’s new things in technology, whether we have a new iPhone or a new cure for an incurable disease.

Jim Rembach:   For me as I started reading through your new book—The Innovation Biome, I think one part that you just said that’s critically important is that I didn’t even realize all the different aspects of innovation. You even talked about how innovation can be described and you list a few terms—you have product innovation, process innovation, service innovation, platform innovation, business model innovation, frugal innovation, radical innovation, open innovation, it goes on and you said that there’s really over a hundred different types of innovation. I was just astounded it’s no wonder why we’re in trouble moving forward because there’s so many different things. And you

also had mentioned that depending on the type of innovation that you’re that you’re trying to undergo is that you have to use unique tools for that type of innovation because if you used the wrong tools you’re going to fail to begin with.

Kumar Mehta:   Yep, you’re absolutely right. Most people that talk about innovation invariably have a solution either they’re a consulting company with a solution or they are software platform or they’re someone who has what they believe is the solution to innovation and that’s what they pitch. Now, that’s one tool there’s nothing wrong with whatever they’ve come up with though very likely it’s kind of well-grounded, well-reasoned it works. But when you try to apply to everything then it’s almost like using a square peg in a round hole it’s just not going to work. You have to match the activities you need to do for the kinds of outcomes you want to generate that is often not viewed by people studying or presenting innovation.

Jim Rembach:   One of the things that you had talked about in order to try to, I guess real things in and be a little bit more focused so that people weren’t all over the place with their thinking about innovation. You talked about experiential innovation, what is that?

Kumar Mehta:   Experiential innovation is about changing experiences. All the innovations that we’ve encountered in our lives have changed human experience and the bigger the experience changed the bigger the innovation. Now, some of them are brand new things. For example, the invention of an automobile was a brand new thing, the invention of the airplane was a brand or the creation of the Internet was a brand new thing. But applying the Internet to online commerce or online banking has changed our experiences forever or taking the airplane and applying it to commercial aviation changes our experience forever. Experiential innovation is all about changing human experiences it could be a new thing but in many cases it’s connecting dots. For example the iPhone, one of the innovations that all of us use and enjoy every day is basically connecting dots there was GPS technology, there was touchscreens, all these things that were out there, the web browser, mobile technology was there and putting them all together in this beautiful package that we can’t live without, that is connecting the dots and that is experiential innovation.

im Rembach:   Thanks for sharing. One of the things that I have always talked about, and you’ll have to tell me and correct me if I was sending people down the wrong path, I think it was a fallacy for me and is for many people that innovation is that light bulb moment where it’s uh-huh all of a sudden something just comes in front of me and it’s totally revolutionary. But when you think about innovation it doesn’t seem like that’s the way it works. It is the dot connecting thing it’s like, I take this thing and this thing and then therefore do some synergistic type of activity to it and now I have something new.

Kumar Mehta:   Correct. Yes, innovation is never a light bulb—very often a light bulb goes up in people’s mind when they see something but it’s almost always building on something else. If you look at the light bulb, literally the invention of the light bulb—no pun intended here—before Thomas Edison’s light bulb there were dozens of other light bulbs that were invented. His light bulb was special because it lasted longer but it was built from everything else that was done so far. The other thing he had done also was he had created an entire cluster of value around an electric meter and all these different things, the surrounding things that were necessary to make an innovation viable and make it the one. But invariably every innovation has always been worked on simultaneously by other people and it’s always an iterative thing. There are so many examples and sometimes examples cut across industries. If you take contact lenses for example, an innovation that millions of people use and it’s been a fantastic innovation and correct the vision. The notion that you can use lenses covering your eyes had been around for a very long time but it was just not feasible to create contact lenses because no one could take mold of sensitive corneal tissue because it was just too painful you just can’t go and measure. So, that innovations sat dormant for decades, I think it was like 60 years. Completely unrelated comes another innovation called anesthesia and that was for something else something completely unrelated. All of a sudden these two meet and now with the availability of anesthesia you’re able to take molds of people’s corneal tissue in people’s eyes and therefore contact lenses something that was dormant for decades got new life and now became a viable thing that all of us can use.

Jim Rembach:   When you start talking about all of these different types of innovation frameworks—when I had the opportunity to interview Dr. K.H. Kim from William and Mary who wrote the book, The Creativity Challenge, why we

are having problems. One of the things that you talk about in the book is that we’re spending more and more money on research and development so that we can innovate and but the return on that dollar is continuing to shrink over time so we’re producing less and less creative thought and innovations. Companies really have to do a better job of first of all knowing the problems with that and addressing that. And then also creating the proper frameworks, of course culture and all those things, in order to be able to capitalize and have innovation occur. You talk about the model called the care model. What does that do for folks?

Kumar Mehta:   The care model basically lets you understand and lets you see what you’re doing. The care model is basically four things that companies do and every company does these four things in varying degrees in order to stay in business. The first is the activities, things you just have to do to keep the lights running whether it’s building manufacturing, selling, doing accounting, finance, doing all the stuff you need to do to keep your business going. The second set of activities you do is advancement activities, you’re improving upon what you’ve already done. So, you’re building the next generation of your car or of your smartphone or of your laundry detergent or you’re taking what you have and making it better or selling it to more people or selling it in more countries you’re just improving upon what you’re doing, improving a process or your products. The third set of activities are the reframing activities. These are activities where you do entirely new things. This is what’s cooked up in R&D labs things that the world has never seen and these are just a development of something brand-new. And the last set of activities and this is not done often enough, are the experiential activities as we just talked about is not necessarily coming up with something brand new but creating new value from things that are already there.

Companies who want to innovate and who want to have these fantastic groundbreaking, earth-shattering innovations that they’re all thirsting for very often don’t even know what they’re doing. They have this big R&D spend they have all these all these different efforts but they don’t know how much time, energy, resources they’re putting towards it, advancement activities or reframing activities or experiential activities. And in many cases each of these activities as we talked about earlier require different tools and different approaches so you need to first understand what you’re doing and then you match the right tools and approaches to doing them. If you don’t do that

then innovation just becomes a shot in the dark, it may happen it may not happen. But if you systematically think about it your chances of releasing breakthrough innovation enhance substantially.

Jim Rembach:   I guess what they say is serendipity is not a good business model?

Kumar Mehta:   It can be good but you can’t count on it you can’t predict it.

Jim Rembach:   Definitely not. Okay, so, I also would think that a lot of people may say, well the whole R&D and innovative types of things are really reserved for those huge companies or those companies that are in certain sectors that are huge or for the startup, nobody else can really do any innovation, but you say that’s not quite true. As a matter of fact you shouldn’t give up, that’s part of what you talk about in the Innovation Biome, what do you really mean by that?

Kumar Mehta:   I think everybody can be innovative and I think everybody is innovative. One of the problems with companies is that they just believe they’re not innovative. They look outside and they see all these cool startups doing all these great things and they say, You know, I need to bring that culture in. I need to become like them so I need to create my own startup or I need to do something like that. One of the things that people don’t realize, in fact there was a study done by the Kauffman Foundation, I think it was 75 % of people who go and start successful startups come from these very companies. So, the entrepreneurial talent is there unlike the vision we have of these geniuses who from a very young age do these incredible things and there are many of those, the large majority of startups are started by people who spend six or more years in a larger company and the average age of a startup founder is closer to 40. One of the I make in the book is that companies have that talent you just need to recognize it and give it the environment to thrive otherwise these people with great ideas, these entrepreneurial people are going to leave and go and start their own startups. But if the larger companies allowed them and give them the ability and the rewards and the motivation and everything else they’re more likely to be successful. Eighty to Ninety percent of startups fail but if this these great ideas have the resources and backing of a large company the brand and all the things that the large company brings there’s absolutely no reason why every company cannot become more innovative.

Jim Rembach:   I dare to say that—when we start talking about innovation, when we start talking about   trying and failing when we start talking about being that creative speaker who wants to be innovative and being an environment that squashes you, there’s a whole lot of emotion that’s associated with all of this. One of the things that we look for on the show are quotes to help inspire us and get us moving in a certain direction or kick start us. Is there a quote or two that you like that you can share?

Kumar Mehta:   There’s one quote that I wrote in the book, Innovation is not about the value and creating ideas it’s about ideas creating value. Now that is something—that’s a quote that’s been picked up that I wrote on the book. If I look outside I think the quote that drives me is, Be the change you wish to see in the world, and this is a quote that drives and guides many people but it’s something that I think it’s just a brilliant quote that I try to aspire you.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing that. I know too when we start talking about, probably your path as well as many other paths and definitely the path of innovation and the trying and the failing and the learning and all of that stuff, there’s a lot of humps that we have to get over in order to finally   get that breakthrough moment? Is there a time where you’ve had to get over the hump that you can share?

Kumar Mehta:   I’ve always had to get over the hump. My career has been going from going from one brand new thing to another. After studying pharmaceuticals I wanted to move to Seattle and I ended up joining, at that time a relatively smaller company called Microsoft. I knew nothing about technology all my education and work was in pharmaceuticals and I had to get over the hump the learning curve of understanding some pretty technical stuff to be successful at Microsoft. After Microsoft, I was the CEO of a large company of over 1200 people called Blue Ocean Market Intelligence—I’ve never been a CEO before I didn’t know how to do it. Going from a company like Microsoft where—the fact that you have Microsoft in your business card gives you a position of authority.

Going to a company that not many people have heard of it was a culture shock for me that people didn’t respond or didn’t reply to my phone calls or emails. That was like, wait a second everyone replies to my email and then and I had to realize not to take it personally. Instead, hey, everyone wants to

talk to somebody from Microsoft and the very same people don’t want to talk to you if you’re at some no-name company or a smaller company. I have to just remind myself that, hey, this is possible with the push with innovation with thinking in a new way about things there will always be someone who’ll listen all you have to do is find those people who listen. Again now as I start a new career, it’s not necessarily a new career, but as I start my career into writing and speaking and educating people on innovation it’s kind of back to the same thing. People say, hey, there’s so much written about innovation there’s so many books and I got to re-educate people and level set them.

Jim Rembach:   Thanks for sharing. As you were talking I started seeing that you’ve had continuous resiliency. And when you start talking about that innovative spirit and creating innovation and when people start coming up with new ideas and even when you start talking about the contact lens of thing being shelved for 60 years before it was able to come to play is that innovation is not a quick thing it seems like it’s a very long-term play. How important is resiliency and persistence in innovation?

Kumar Mehta:   It is incredibly important because companies that are chasing the big breakthrough are never going to get it. The only way to get that big breakthrough is to have thousands of things happen all the time and every day and it’s when you have all those little things happen that something breaks through into something big. Every company we can think of, when you think of the most innovative companies in your mind, every single one of them has had more failures than successes and more misses than hits but we just think about the one hit because it so overwhelmingly dominates everything that the company does and we don’t think about the hundreds of failures that have gone towards making that. So being innovative is not a one-shot thing it’s not a one-time deal that’s what the innovation biome, is it’s a culture it’s an environment where innovation happens all the time. When you have that innovation happening all the time you’re going to get rewarded far more than you can ever imagine.

Jim Rembach:   Based on what you were just saying and just thinking about things myself is that there’s a whole lot of failure that’s going on and you have to have a strong community to be able to pick one another up, in addition to yourself, so that you can ultimately get to that big prize. Okay, you talked about this transition that you’re going through right, you have the book, you’re trying to do some speaking, increase your exposure and teach

people so that we can   turn around this poor return on investment on R&D spend, and I definitely wish that I can help you in some way possible, but when you start thinking about all of those things that you have including your golf game on your plate, what’s one of your goals?

Kumar Mehta:   My goal is actually a pretty broad goal. What’s driving me is actually when I retired from being the CEO of my company, was that I wanted to impact a million lives in a positive fashion. And then I kind of thought, why a million why not a bigger number? And I figured that the only way I can impact lives is by helping organizations how to innovate. By providing the real knowledge and not selling something—not selling a tool, not selling an approach just kind of taking innovation breaking it down into its components and educating people—hey, if you really want to innovate here’s what you can do and as companies innovate all of our lives get better. So the impact I can have is through this kind of leverage.

Jim Rembach:   And the Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best. Now before we move on let’s get a quick word from our sponsor.

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Jim Rembach:     Alright, here we go Fast Leader legion it’s time for the Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Kumar, the Hump Day Hoedown is a part of our show where you give us good insights fast. I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us a robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Kumar Mehta, are you ready to hoedown?

Kumar Mehta:   Yes.

Jim Rembach:   Alright. What do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today?

Kumar Mehta:   Myself.

Jim Rembach:   What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?

Kumar Mehta:   Trust yourself and be committed to what you want to do.

Jim Rembach:   What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success?

Kumar Mehta:   Empathy.

Jim Rembach:   What do you feel is one of your best tools that helps you lead in business or life?

Kumar Mehta:   Everyone around me.

Jim Rembach:   What would be one book that you’d recommend to our listeners and it could be from any genre, of course we’re going to put a link to the Innovation Biome on your show notes page as well.

Kumar Mehta:   My pick my favorite book from when I was a child, The Godfather.

Jim Rembach:   Okay, Fast Leader legion, you can find links to that and other bonus information from today’s show by going to fastleader.net/Kumar Mehta. Okay, Kumar this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you were given the opportunity go back to the age of 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you but you can’t take everything back you can only choose one. What skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you and why.

Kumar Mehta:   I take back my self-belief and my confidence and the ability to trust myself. When I was 25 I probably didn’t trust myself enough and I was unsure but you have to believe that you know more than you give yourself credit for. And if you just believe and commit to what whatever you’re out to do you’re very likely to succeed.

Jim Rembach:   Kumar it was an honored to spend time with you today can you please share with a Fast Leader Legion how they can connect with you?

Kumar Mehta: You can connect with me on LinkedIn or go to my website, www.kumarmehta.com. Or just email me at kumar@bridgesinsight.com.

Jim Rembach:   Kumar Mehta, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader Legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links, from
every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t
already, head on over the www.fastleader.net. So we can help you move onward and upward faster.

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