discovered Tendayi Viki during a Strategyzer masterclass on building resilient companies.
We talked about:
Tendayi Viki is an author and corporate innovation expert. As Associate Partner at Strategyzer, he helps companies innovate for the future while managing their core business. He has written three books; Pirates In The Navy, The Corporate Startup and The Lean Product Lifecycle. He previously served as Director of Product Lifecycle at Pearson, where he co-developed an innovation framework that won the Best Innovation Program 2015 at the Corporate Entrepreneur Awards in New York. Tendayi has been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award and was named on the Thinkers50 2018 Radar List for emerging management thinkers to watch. He is also a regular contributor at Forbes.
Katherine Ann Byam
So my first question for you. 2020, has been a surprising year for us all that has created fertile ground for innovation and disruption. In your experience, what are the characteristics of companies who ride the wave of changes? Well, and those that don't?
Tendayi Viki 1:56
Yeah, so. So it's been interesting. And there's a lot of conversations going on around what changes that we've seen in companies, right, that are gonna last post-COVID-19. And sometimes I think we're actually asking the wrong question. You know, I think we're failing to make a distinction between two things. We're failing to make a distinction between changes that companies are making to their business models, because they have to because otherwise, they're going to go bust, versus the behaviour, structures, and processes they're actually using to make those changes. And so we're asking whether the changes will last.
But we're not asking whether the new behaviours will act. Yeah. And so and that really speaks to the question that you're asking here, which is, you know, what are the characteristics of companies that ride the wave of change as well. What are the kind of companies that ride the wave of change as well, the companies that have already built the innovation muscle, before the change, or the disruption actually takes place? You know, I mean, I always say this, like, you know, after you've had the heart attack it is too late to start jogging, it's better to actually start developing the muscle before you have to attack. And so what we're finding is that all those companies that had a pre-existing innovation ecosystem, we’re able to quickly leverage spin-up. Startup teams, make small bets, run experiments and tests.
We did that a strategy, though, you know, after the crisis was at testing various, in various different offerings of our programs. Because we already have this practice internally, we're able to do that quickly, versus those companies that are like, Oh, right, well, first, everybody go home. Okay, now we need Legal [teams] to look at whether your computers are compliant, then we need to say that it took them a little much longer time to start thinking about how how how, how they can survive, with the pressure that carried on being on them, a whole lot of these companies figured out something. They built new platforms, new ways of working, and built new business models. But the question is, after the crisis, will they go? Okay, that was fun. Let's get back to what we used to do before? Or will they really deliberately think about developing those innovation muscles now?
Katherine Ann Byam 4:02
Yeah, it's super interesting how companies are trying now to build a fast digital transformation platform that they can then grow on, and trying to figure out how to manage that implementation as we go. So the next question I wanted to poke into is, in your work, you talk about two main drivers of innovation, which are the external growth factor and transforming the internal systems. So how does the message of sustainability when we think about all that, that COVID has brought about and change in the world and the sort of change and consumer trends as well? How do you feel that sustainability fits into those two levers?
Tendayi Viki 4:44
Yeah, so it's interesting, right? I mean, in my work, I wouldn't describe them as to lever this such. I would describe them as two goals, right. So if you're an innovation team, or you're thinking about developing an innovation programme, you have two things that you really need to be thinking about right, which is, to what extent is this programme we're launching going to change our company and make our company be able to do innovation on a repeatable basis.
And so that's what we call the transformation part. Right? So are you building systems? Are you building practices? Are you building toolboxes that people can use on an ongoing basis? Or are you doing innovation, there's just a whole bunch of one-off projects, each one having to negotiate with a company, a new innovation that never happened before. So that's one piece. And then the other piece, which you refer to as growth is, you know, beyond just changing the company, we change the company, so the company can create things of value, right. And so the real way, maybe to actually, I wouldn't call it a third dimension, I will call it relabeling that dimension, right, moving away from calling in growth, because then makes it a single metric sort of focus, but really think about value creation.
And when you start thinking about value creation, then you can think about - Okay, well, are we creating sustainable value? Right? Are we having enough impact? Are we developing business models that are more suitable to the world in the way that is changing? And so, you know, creating that sustainable value becomes, you know, the other dimension. So what we don't want is innovation theatre, right, which is innovation programs that are aimed at either changing the company or creating value, because then it's just wasted, just like, yeah, we had a hackathon. Yeah. You have to really be thinking about exactly what is the point of all the work that you're doing?
Katherine Ann Byam 6:28
That's really interesting, as well, because I feel as if there is an appetite for pooling lots of ideas. So gathering ideas from customers, gathering ideas from employees, and there's a lot of excitement and buzz around that. Is that innovation theatre?
Tendayi Viki 6:45
It's not innovation theatre, right. So gathering ideas from, from customers, gathering ideas from employees, and voting up, the best ideas to work on is not innovation theatre in and of itself. It becomes innovation theatre, when you do nothing else, but that. Right? Right. So if you gather the ideas, the question is, then what do you do with them?
Are you able to use some of those ideas to create something of value if you are, then that's not innovation theatre, the idea competition is a stepping stone towards something valuable, or the hackathon is a stepping stone to something valuable. The idea session, when you're doing sticky notes, is a stepping stone towards something valuable. But what happens in most of these situations is like, Whoa, we had a competition. And here's the winner, let's all go home, not next year, whatever, another one. If you start doing it like that, it is definitely innovation theatre, it's the best theatre out there.
Katherine Ann Byam 7:37
That is quite. The other thing I'd like to touch on on this point is that I also work with a number of female entrepreneurs who are in the sustainability space. So a lot of them create businesses of handmade products or recycled materials and stuff like this. But what's interesting about working with entrepreneurs, as opposed to working with big corporations is that the bottom line is important. Right? It's important for them to be profitable. But it's also important for them to live their purpose and to live their value. So I wonder if this is something that companies also need to be considering how they bring purpose into that mix?
Tendayi Viki 8:11
Yes, absolutely. I actually think companies need to really be thinking about how they bring purpose because again, beyond just love creating bottom-line growth, people also want to feel like they're making a positive contribution to the world, it kind of gets them up in the morning, and they feel positive about going to work. You know, companies like Unilever, underperform, and are really putting the stake in the ground, like defining themselves as that way become companies that are people who are happy to work for those organisations.
Right. Just a word to the wise for your social entrepreneurship friends, right. I gave a keynote the other day, we're talking about the starving artist, which is people that are so focused on the cause that they forget that they also need to be profitable. And so it's a balance between those two things right, you have to make sure that you've covered both parts of the combination.
Katherine Ann Byam 8:57
Well said. I couldn't say it better. So my last question to you is going to be about pirates. I love to hear you talk about pirates. So what I'd like you to do is explain to my listeners who are part of a bigger organisation particularly what type of pirates they should be.
Tendayi Viki 9:17
Alright, Jeff, so Alex Osterwalder, I, you know, I work with them at Strategyzer, but when I'm Associate partner and Alex hates the word pirate to describe innovators, and he says like, you don't want to be a pirate, pirates used to get killed. Right? And so, you know, I'm working on a book of pirates in the Navy and my boss hates the word pirate. But actually, when we were doing the work on the book, we discovered that not all pirates are the same right you don't get like people who just tend to use the words interchangeably pirate, buccaneer, etc. But we discovered that there's a class of pirates called privateers that are very distinct from just the typical pirate because the typical pirate is just a criminal. They're unaffiliated to anything.
They don't have any connection. Anything, they just out there roaming the high seas, doing whatever they want. And of course, that's life, if that's what you want to do. But if you want to do innovation in such large companies, you need to think of yourself more as a privateer, who is also a pirate. But they're a pirate that's actually been commissioned by someone to go out into the world and do work. For example, the British government used to commission people like Francis Drake, to go out and raise Spanish ships.
And then and then bring that back to back to the UK. So what we're saying is simply this, if you're a corporate innovator, it is important that you build a bridge between the innovation work you're doing and the core business with which you work, because there's no chance that any innovation that a corporate innovator works on is going to succeed without support from the leadership inside that organisation.
Katherine Ann Byam 10:43
That's absolutely true. So thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us. Any closing words for either the entrepreneurs, who are out there making a big splash in the sustainability space? Or the corporates that want to do more? Any closing words?
Tendayi Viki 10:59
Yeah, I mean, not a lot, really, I mean, the thing I've been most interested in, in all my work, is authenticity, right? So we just want to make sure that we're doing stuff that creates value rather than stuff that, you know, it's just fake and, and kind of just, you know, like people are just performing innovation theatre, rather than actually doing things that create value. So you cannot, if you're a social entrepreneur, create value. If the business you work on is not sustainably profitable, it will die.
And then the value we're trying to create dies with it. So you have to focus on both those things. You cannot create value if all you do is events, and speakers, and all these things. If you're a corporate innovator, you also have to be thinking about right, making sure that you're also generating revenue or impact or you know, value. So that's really what we care about. And then the question just becomes, okay, if we're going to be authentic, what are the real true things that we can do in order to do valuable work, and that's really where the conversation needs to move to.
Katherine Ann Byam 11:58
I love it. Let's take the conversation there. Thank you for joining us on Where Ideas Launch - The Podcast.
Tendayi Viki
Thank you.
Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you today by the Dieple Virtual Service Hub. The Dieple Service Hub is a digital transformation strategy service that supports startups needing to optimise their processes and their performance to scale up growth. We also help medium-sized firms and modernising their operations and our services include sustainable strategy, analytics and tech enablement. To find out more contact Katherine Ann Byam on LinkedIn