Loonshots: Imagining the Impossible
What is the one trait shared by the most innovative large organizations? Drawing on the science of phase transitions, and using stories that range from the hunt for U-boats in WWII to the search for new cancer drugs, and examples including Harley-Davidson, James Bond, and Steve Jobs, Safi shows how the most innovative organizations survive and thrive in disruptive times. Hear fresh insights from this new kind of science and learn three techniques — structure rather than culture — that creatives, leaders, and visionaries can use to liberate the ideas trapped inside small and large companies everywhere.
Strategy in Times of Crisis
Learn how Amazon beat Google, how one mall succeeded while all others went bankrupt, and how the music industry escaped death. See how these examples illustrate three principles for choosing new markets in times of rapid change: how to spot new opportunities, exploit hidden advantages, and prevent the most common mistake in launching new businesses. Learn how the worst drug in history became a life-saving medicine, and what that means for leadership in times of crisis.
The 21st Century CXO
Innovation efforts at successful companies often flounder as the core suffocates or rejects the new, a problem made more severe by rapidly changing markets. In this keynote, which features highlights from the full-day workshops Safi runs for Boards and executive teams, Safi describes a new type of operating system the 21st Century CXO can use to meet this challenge: five principles behind the system, metrics, and mindset that will help your team run business experiments at pace and scale – without dropping the ball on the core franchise.
Leadership Team Workshops:
Building an Innovation Operating System
Successful companies that have matured from startup phase to dominating a core business line often struggle to expand beyond that core. Their innovation efforts flounder as the core suffocates or rejects the new, and zombie projects, premature scaling, and innovation theater proliferate. The key to get past these traps is to build a sustainable, integrated system for running business experiments at pace and scale, year after year.
In this full-day workshop, which is based on the novel ideas in Loonshots and his work with some of the most innovative organizations in the world, Safi describes ten principles that underlie an innovation operating system, using surprising and entertaining examples from Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, Google, Harley-Davidson, Lego, and the US military. Interactive exercises help leadership teams internalize the ideas and apply them to real-time problems.
By the end of the workshop, teams will have selected up to 5 experiments to be pitched to an internal growth board as well as learned the most important elements of a new type of innovation system, both structural (org design) and cultural (mindset). These include two-track management; leadership roles; pretotyping (ultra-fast, inexpensive experiments); when to spin-out vs spin-in; system vs. outcome mindset; the importance of celebrating good fails; the qualities of a good business experiment; product vs. strategy innovation; red team – blue team exercises; the purpose and function of innovation sherpas; the connection to longer-term strategy and M+A; why you should never do business plan competitions; and the metrics that help separate governance from management.
