- Innovation loves crisis, the limitation that crisis brings - When times are good, transformational ideas don’t thrive - Biotech innovation has 4 phases: - Federal agencies try to address market failures: where necessary things wouldn’t be profitable to develop - Universities have individual researchers pursuing their curiosity - Small VC companies trying to translate early stage ideas from universities into the real world - Larger companies scaling ideas Tips for running a business - Make sure you make space for new ideas and execution of existing ideas - balance artist and soldier time - Lean into “the suck“ when bad things happen to understand why - Create a system for managing ideas - Phases of a business - Early: finding product market fit - Scale: how to market, sell, and deliver to more customers - Last phase: growing from managing a product to managing ideas - Get as good at managing your portfolio of new ideas as you are at managing your product and your customers - Experts often don’t think innovation is possible, but there are no experts of the future - [[Experimental mindset]] is critical to success - There are lots of good ideas typically - Organization, creating fast experiments to test hypotheses, execution make or break - Lessons learned over his career - Remember to incorporate emotions, not just data, into how you interact with people - Listen to what people are saying and ask probing questions to get to the music behind their words – sometimes people are scared and they don’t directly address what they want to - When things are going well, you’re never as good as the market thinks you are. When things are going poorly you’re never as bad as the market thinks you are. Pay attention to the ball and where you’re going - Things that help you keep going - Spirit – why you’re doing what you’re doing - Relationships – easy to let I’m go by the wayside as you’re pursuing something big - Time – it’s important to protect your time and focus on the most important things - Two different styles of collaboration – introverted and extroverted - Introverted: need more time and space to think about questions, want to explore solutions spaces before deciding (See [[Exploring]]) - These people need more curiosity, space, empathy, and probing to get to what they really think. For example, saying “When Jimmy made that last point I saw you frown. What were you thinking in that moment?“ - Extroverted: want to ping pong ideas around rapidly (See [[Solutioning]]) - It’s a good idea to wait until the end of a conversation to share your own ideas. This avoids biasing people and gets the most creativity out of your team - Celebrate and recognize good failures - Experiments with a well formed hypothesis, good execution, and clear data coming out of them - You are the easiest person to fool – that’s hard to remember - “You can always tell a good leader by the arrows in his ass“ - Career advice - Let curiosity be your guide - not the same as follow your passion - Incentives are an often-overlooked yet crucial piece of leadership - Most recommended book: Joyful Wisdom #podcast #theknowledgeproject