The art of innovation | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxBerkeley

TEDx Talks

22 Feb 201421:15

EducationalLearning

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TLDRGuy Kawasaki shares his top ten principles for innovation and success, drawing on his experience at Apple and as an entrepreneur and investor. Key ideas include: focus on making meaning and changing the world rather than making money; create a short, powerful mantra explaining your purpose; don't just iterate, leap to the next curve; build products that are deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant; release early versions with elements of crappiness; let customers use your product in unexpected ways; churn products frequently; polarize people with bold innovations; niche thyself by being simultaneously unique and valuable.

Takeaways

😀 Making meaning and changing the world should be the primary goal, not making money
📝 Create a short, memorable mantra to explain why your innovation matters
🚀 Take big innovative leaps to the next curve, don't just incrementally improve
🎲 Innovate using the DICEE principles: Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering and Elegant
😅 Don't worry about perfection early on, it's okay to ship an imperfect but innovative product
🌱 Allow diverse, unexpected usage and applications to blossom from your innovation
⬆️ Polarize people - great innovations don't please everyone
♻️ Continuously iterate, improve and evolve your innovation over time
🎯 Position innovations as both unique and valuable to succeed
🗣️ Pitch effectively by customizing your introduction and keeping presentations simple

Q & A

What is the main theme of Guy Kawasaki's talk?
-The main theme of Guy Kawasaki's talk is the art of innovation - how to think creatively and develop innovative ideas and products.
What does Guy say is the first step towards innovation?
-Guy says the first step towards innovation is to determine how you can create meaning - how you can change the world.
What should be the focus instead of creating a mission statement according to Guy?
-Instead of creating a mission statement, Guy recommends coming up with a short 2-3 word mantra that captures why your innovative idea should exist.
What does 'jumping the curve' mean in innovation?
-Jumping the curve means not just making incremental improvements, but innovating to create revolutionary new products and services - like going from harvesting ice to inventing refrigerators.
What are the 5 qualities that make up the DICEE acronym?
-The 5 DICEE qualities are: Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering, and Elegant. Great innovations exhibit these qualities.
What business 'curve' does Guy say Apple occupied with spreadsheets/databases?
-Guy says Apple incorrectly focused on spreadsheets, databases, and word processors - curves they failed at. Instead their success came from desktop publishing which 'saved' Apple.
What is the purpose of the 2x2 matrix Guy shows?
-The 2x2 matrix plots uniqueness vs. value, showing that innovative products want to occupy the high uniqueness, high value quadrant to differentiate themselves.
What is Guy's advice regarding presentations?
-Guy recommends having no more than 10 slides, being able to present them in 20 minutes, and using a font size of at least 30 points.
What does Guy see as two types of 'Bozos' that innovators will encounter?
-The two types are the 'obvious loser' Bozo, and the more 'dangerous' rich Bozo - innovators need to learn to resist naysayers.
What does Guy want the audience to take away regarding innovation?
-Guy wants the audience to appreciate that innovation requires creativity, perseverance through naysayers, and a willingness to put out an imperfect product and continue improving it.

Outlines

00:00

😊 Introductory Remarks and Speech Overview

The speaker opens with some self-deprecating humor about his Stanford background and introduces the theme of his talk on innovation. He outlines the top 10 key points he will cover structured in a format to keep the audience engaged.

05:03

😇 Making Meaning Instead of Money

The first key point is that great innovation starts with the desire to make meaning/impact rather than to just make money. Making meaningful change often results in making money too.

10:05

😉 Develop a Short, Memorable Mantra

The second idea is to have a short 2-4 word mantra explaining why your innovation should exist, instead of a vague mission statement. For example Apple's mantra was to 'democratize computing'.

15:05

📈 Jump to the Next Curve, Don't Optimize the Existing One

The third concept is to make innovations that jump to entirely new curves rather than just optimizing existing solutions. He gives examples like going from harvested ice to factory made ice to refrigerators.

20:08

🎲 Roll the DICEE - Elements of Great Innovations

The fourth idea introduces the DICEE framework outlining 5 qualities present in impactful innovations - Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering and Elegant. Great innovations exhibit some combination of these traits.

😅 Don't Worry, Be Crappy - It's Okay to Ship an Imperfect Product

The fifth point urges innovators to ship revolutionary products even if they have elements of crappiness rather than waiting endlessly until everything is perfect. Doing so gets your product out faster.

🌼 Let 100 Flowers Blossom - Users Will Find Unexpected Uses

The sixth idea is to let users apply your product in new unexpected ways you didn't anticipate. Their novel applications are often the source of your success so embrace this.

🔥 Polarize People - Great Innovations Inspire Love and Hate

The seventh point is that truly innovative products tend to polarize people - some people love them intensely while others hate them. Don't shy away from controversy.

♻️ Churn Baby Churn - Continuously Improve Your Product

The eighth concept urges constant iteration - rapidly evolving your product from v1.0 to v2.0 and beyond, incorporating user feedback to address crappy elements.

🎯 Niche Thyself - Make Your Product Unique and Valuable

The ninth idea explains that you need to make your product uniquely valuable rather than competing on non-differentiated features like price.

🎤 Perfect Your Elevator Pitch

The tenth concept focuses on perfecting your pitch, customizing your intro for each audience and following rules of slide design to effectively communicate your ideas.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡innovation

The main theme of the video is innovation, as stated by the speaker at the beginning. He shares his top 10 recommendations on "the art of innovation" based on his experience at Apple, as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and advisor. For example, he states that great innovation involves jumping to new curves rather than incrementally improving existing products.

💡meaning

The speaker emphasizes the importance of innovation being driven by a desire to create meaning and change the world rather than solely make money. For instance, he contrasts companies like Apple, Google and eBay that aimed to broadly democratize access to computers, information and commerce vs. those focused only on profits.

💡mantra

The speaker recommends creating a short 2-4 word mantra that encapsulates the meaning or purpose behind an innovation. For example, he shares the mantras "healthy fast food" for Wendy's and "authentic athletic performance" for Nike that guide their brand identities.

💡curve

Jumping curves means reinventing and reimagining products and services rather than incrementally improving them. The speaker uses examples of how ice harvesting evolved into centralized ice factories and later household refrigerators to illustrate the concept of radical innovation curves vs. linear progress.

💡DICEE

This acronym encapsulates 5 ideals for guiding innovation: Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Empowering and Elegant. An example given is how the MacBook Air embodies these ideals by being intuitively designed, highly functional and making users more creative.

💡crappy

Don't Worry, Be Crappy suggests first versions of innovative products will have imperfections and flaws. The key is getting revolutionary, next-curve ideas to market, then rapidly iterating based on customer feedback.

💡flowers

Let 100 flowers blossom conveys keeping an open mind about use cases and applications for innovations. For instance, the speaker admits Apple missed identifying the Macintosh's killer app of desktop publishing, which fueled adoption more than their intended uses like spreadsheets.

💡polarize

The speaker argues great innovations often polarize opinions, giving examples like TiVo delighting some users while upsetting advertising agencies by enabling ad-skipping. He says don't fear backlash, as hordes of devotees can counter critics.

💡churn

In the context of innovation, churn means continuously evolving products after initial release. This requires soliciting customer feedback, being self-critical and denying complacency to drive iterative improvements via updates like 1.1, 1.2 and so on.

💡pitch

Perfecting the investment pitch is vital for innovators to evangelize and fund their ideas. Two key pitch concepts covered are customizing introductions for each audience and limiting slide numbers to ideally 10 slides and no more than 20 minutes.

Highlights

The key to innovation is making meaning, not making money. Focus on changing the world.

Create a short 2-4 word mantra explaining why your innovation should exist.

Great innovation happens when you jump to entirely new curves, not just doing things 10% better.

Most companies define themselves by what they do, not the benefits they provide. This limits innovation.

Great innovations tend to be deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant - they "roll the DICEE".

When innovating, "don't worry, be crappy". Early versions will be imperfect, but getting to market fast matters.

Let 100 flowers blossom - users will find ways to use your product you didn't anticipate. Embrace it when they do!

Great innovations polarize people - don't be afraid to upset some people.

Churn constantly - keep rapidly evolving your product with constant small iterative changes.

The best marketing niche for a product is high uniqueness and high value - solve a problem no one else does.

Customize your sales pitch introduction to each specific audience for maximum impact.

Presentations should have 10 slides, last 20 minutes, use 30 point font size minimum.

Expose yourself to naysayers so you build immunity - but don't listen to losers telling you something can't be done.

The most dangerous naysayers are rich & famous people who just got lucky - don't assume they are smart.

Innovation always polarizes people - including extremely successful people making obviously wrong predictions about the future.

Transcripts

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