Smart Growth – the Hipster

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

Radical collaboration entails engaging & aligning three very different personalities – the Hipster, Hustlers and Hacker. Laurent Simon

Each of these characters correspond to a fundamental question or test each innovation must pass. If our idea fails to pass the test – Stop! And decide, do we persevere, pivot, or kill the idea? Here are the three questions & corresponding personality:

1. Does it wow? Hipster
2. Can we make money? Hustler
3. Does it work? Hacker

The sequence of questions reflects hard-won wisdom:

• If the idea doesn’t wow the customer, why bother?
• If you can’t make money, why build it?
• The ‘better mousetrap’ metaphor is flat out wrong! In fact, nobody cares about our mousetrap.

Hipsters typically have an artistic temperament. They’re able to imagine the entire customer journey from ‘I think I need something…’ to ‘Wow, I really loved that experience. I’m going to tell all my friends about it’.

Think Steve Jobs, Jon Ive (Jobs’s Chief Designer), or Remi Babinet (the architect of Evian’s famous ‘dancing baby’ campaign). The best Hipsters dig deeply into a product, seeking to discover the simplicity at its core. They believe ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’

Steve Jobs famously insisted that Apple’s ecosystem be closed so that ‘we can control the entire customer experience’. By contrast, Bill Gates (a consummate Hacker) prefers open systems to ensure access to the best technologies. Gates complained that Jobs ‘did not really understand technology’. And Jobs complained that ‘Microsoft’s customer experience was lousy’. So, it goes…

How many organizations understand & fully engage the Hipster? Here are some common Hipster laments: ‘People around here don’t understand what I can do…They think my job is to design the website.’ To be sure, some Hackers & Hustlers are allergic to Hipsters, which can lead to comic, though unhelpful episodes.

My favorite Hipster is Leonardo DaVinci, who like Jobs sought to get to the simplicity at the heart of things. I recently visited the Leonardo DaVinci Museum in Rome, which has two main sections: Paintings and Inventions – (‘Hipster’ & ‘Hacker’, no?). A measure of genius is surely the ability to fluidly work in very different spaces: in Leonardo’s case, Art & Engineering. (In Jobs’ case Design & Business; in Gates’ case, Technology & Business.)

The Hipster is the least understood & most vulnerable of the 3Hs. Jon Ive was unique in that he had Steve Jobs full support & protection. Too often the Hipsters hard-won insights are abandoned in the mad rush to ‘ship the product’! Protect & support your Hipsters; make a place for them in your company culture and at the decision-making table. We ignore their empathic understanding at our peril. Next time, I’ll tell you all a funny story about what can happen if you don’t.


Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS For more on Hipsters and 3H teams, check out our book.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

Innovation Fundamentals - Radical Collaboration & the 3H Model
My Hockey Stick Curve, part 1
OpEx/Lean, Innovation and Wakefulness
The Difference Between Protecting Your Core Business & Igniting New Growth

Innovation Fundamentals - Radical Collaboration & the 3H Model

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

Radical collaboration entails engaging & aligning three very different personalities – the Hipster, Hustlers and Hacker. Laurent Simon

Laurent Simon, my Innovation mentor & co-author introduced me to the ‘3H’ concept. Innovations usually fail. The famous ‘hockey stick’ curve – nothing, nothing, then fantastic – is rare. And one the most common failure modes is not having the 3H’s on the proverbial bus.

Innovation thrives when three very different personality types - the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker - are present & in full flow. If one or more are absent, our innovations are likely to be flat, or even worse, over-complicated & irritating. This may help explain why startup Failure Rates are so high – (e.g., 80 to 90% in Consumer Goods).

Each of these characters correspond to a fundamental question or test each innovation must pass. If our idea fails to pass the test – Stop! And decide, do we persevere, pivot, or kill the idea? Here are the three questions & corresponding personality:

1. Does it wow? Hipster
2. Can we make money? Hustler
3. Does it work? Hacker

The sequence of questions reflects hard-won wisdom:

• If the idea doesn’t wow the customer, why bother? Indeed, why make a product that nobody wants?
• If you can’t make money, why build it? Remember, we’re talking about commercial enterprises here.
• Don’t spend a lot of money building something unless the idea has passed the first two tests. The ‘better mousetrap’ metaphor is flat out wrong! In fact, nobody cares about our freakin’ mousetrap.

Here are some corollaries:

• Wow means the customer wants it right now. “Here is my credit card. Put me on the list – I want it now!”
• Talk is cheap – the customer has to put money on the table. (We call this our ‘Mafia offer’)
• Demonstrate the product without spending a ton of money on it. DropBox famously confirmed customer appetite with a 2-minute YouTube video and a paper simulation.
• ‘Can we make money?’ often entails a ‘soft launch’ during which you confirm customer appetite for the product, pricing, projected volume, distribution and the rest of your value stream
• ‘Does it work’ entails building not only the product, but also the production & distribution system, and usually entails a full launch in a representative market.

‘Radical collaboration’ means the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker are fully involved from beginning to end and have a strong say in critical decisions. Another common failure mode is engaging the Hipster early in the process, only to exclude them from critical decisions later in the process. “We don’t really need these features, do we? Let’s drop them - we need to ship next week!” And so, the Hustler or Hacker jettison the very features the created the Wow - and wonder why nobody buys the product.

The opposite scenario is also common. Hackers, enamoured with the technology, fight to add more proverbial bells & whistles, none of which the customer asked for. The tragicomic result: the customer actively hates the product. Not only do we fail to create value, we destroy it!

In articles to come, I’ll do a deep dive on each of the Hipster, Hustler and Hacker personalities, and tell some war stories. The creative interplay between these very different personalities is interesting, and often quite funny. Each of us typically has a dominant tendency but sprint after sprint, you may find your own personality deepening & extending.


Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

My Hockey Stick Curve, part 1
OpEx/Lean, Innovation and Wakefulness
The Difference Between Protecting Your Core Business & Igniting New Growth
The Control Tower – Learning to See What Is

My Hockey Stick Curve, part 1

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

In the world of startups, everything is a hockey stick curve. Not in real life, of course, but the ones you see, at least. Nothing, nothing, nothing – then fantastic. Bjorn Jeffery

I’ve lived the hockey stick curve, first as a startup founder, and then as a mentor. As Bjorn Jeffery suggests, we usually fail. The ‘nothing, nothing, nothing, then fantastic’ trajectory is rare! Here are typical failure rates in different industries:

Industry-Specific Startup Failure Rates

• Information Industry: 63% failure rate after five years. (Forbes)
• Transportation and Utilities: 55% failure rate after five years. (Forbes)
• Retail and Construction: 53% failure rate after five years. (Forbes)
• Manufacturing: 51% failure rate after five years. (StartupTalky)
• Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate: 42% failure rate after five years.

And as I’ve discussed in earlier articles, new product launch failure rates in say, consumer goods, typically range from 80 to 90%.

Full disclosure: two of my five startups (40%) made money - which means we’ve been extraordinarily lucky. My success rate as a startup mentor is not quite as good, but that’s no big deal. I work with Laurent Simon, my friend, innovation sensei, and co-author. We cull loser ideas quickly, and pivot fluidly based on what we’ve learned. (‘Fail fast & fail forward’.) We work with splendid people around that world, in great industries, and have a hell of a good time. It’s an unusual path for a former Toyota factory rat, no?

So, what have I learned about Innovation and the hockey stick curve? Here’s an overview, detailed in our book, Harnessing Digital Disruption:

• Three phases:
• Confirm traction
• Soft Launch
• Full launch
• Each phase entails answering a key question:
• Confirm traction – Does it wow?
• Soft Launch – Can we make money?
• Full launch – Does it work?
• Working our way up the curve entails answering three questions (and many related sub-questions):
• Who is the customer?
• What does the customer value?
• Why does the customer buy (or not buy) from us?
• Working our way up the curve requires rapid, inexpensive (‘lean’) experiments through which we:
• ‘Discover’ answers to our questions, and
• ‘Validate’ what we have discovered
• This process is iterative, continuous, and entails the disciplined application of the scientific method (Hypothesis – Test – Observation & Reflection – Learning)

And here are some other learning points. None of this works without good visual management. We have to make the invisible ‘information elephant’, visible. None of this works without a disciplined, iterative process – day after day, week after week and sprint after sprint.

Lastly, Innovation and the hockey stick curve are highly abnormal. They’re like fragile hot-house flowers vulnerable to cold winds, harsh chemicals, and dry infertile soils. That’s why we insist on ‘Executive Air Cover’ – to give the flowers a chance to root & grow. We have to protect Innovation and create space for it – physical, financial, strategic, cultural and temporal space.

Some companies are lucky and have the ‘startup gene’ in their DNA. More often, Innovation is foreign and triggers corporate antibodies. As in nature, these antibodies are doing what they’re designed to do. But actions meant to be protective sometimes turn out to be destructive. (Thank you, Clayton Christensen). More to come.

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

OpEx/Lean, Innovation and Wakefulness
The Difference Between Protecting Your Core Business & Igniting New Growth
The Control Tower – Learning to See What Is
The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is

OpEx/Lean, Innovation and Wakefulness

Pascal Dennis, co-author of Harnessing Digital Disruption

We spend our lives asleep. George Gurdjieff

OpEx/Lean is at heart is about wakefulness. Sages throughout history have argued that we are sleepers in a dream, and that our grasp of what's actually happening is, at best, tenuous. Many schools of philosophy and religion include prayer, meditation, or exercises, designed to "wake" the sleeper. Stoicism remains relevant today not in the least because it emphasizes regular reflection aimed at virtue and self improvement.

I’ve practiced regular reflection for decades now using the PDCA cycle, which surely Epictetus & other Stoic masters would find simpatico. OpEx/Lean methods like visual management, 5S and standardized work are all meant to jolt us out of our slumber. Defect-proofing usually entails a visual tool that loudly signals the abnormality – Wake up! - allowing us to contain it before it becomes a defect.

Strategy Deployment, essentially the application of PDCA to our enterprise, is also about wakefulness. Our Control Tower and operating rhythms, for example, entail stand-up meetings in front of visuals that make ‘hot spots’ obvious. All my business novels, include the latest, Harnessing Digital Disruption, entail the protagonists' gradual awakening.

Pema Chodron, the American nun and Buddhist teacher challenges us to see what’s there. Her practice entails disciplined meditation – sitting still, recognizing the many attachments that distract our minds from what’s there. And lest we forget, Socrates famously advocated ‘know thyself’, believing this to be essential for a good & virtuous life.

Innovation is also about wakefulness, and seeing what the customer actually values – even though they may not see it themselves! (Steve Jobs famously said, ‘The customer doesn’t know what they want, until I show it to them.’) And then envisioning & designing an entire customer journey – one that will blow the customer’s mind. This was surely another of Jobs’ superpowers. Did Jobs’ interest in mysticism and meditation, combined with his artistic temperament not enable his creativity?

Best regards,

Pascal Dennis

E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org

PS: To learn more about my executive mentoring programs: Exec 101 - Protecting the Core Business, and Exec 201 – Igniting New Growth, feel free to drop me an e-mail.




In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look….

The Difference Between Protecting Your Core Business & Igniting New Growth
The Control Tower – Learning to See What Is
The Hardest Thing - Seeing What Is
Fundamentals of OpEx/Lean, Part 2