00:13 MONIQUE BLOUGH, HOST:
Welcome to Responsible Disruption. In today's episode, we will explore the dynamic world of internal innovation within nonprofit and for-profit organizations. I'm your host, Monique Blau, and joining us are two guests with deep expertise in driving innovation. First, we have Mike Procee, an accomplished entrepreneur, board member, Energy Trust professional at TC Energy, innovation and entrepreneurship educator, and host of his own innovation podcast. He is also a candidate in the Doctor of Business Administration program with a focus on corporate innovation and a founding member of the Calgary Innovation Peer Forum. Mike focuses on leveraging innovation to achieve long-term strategies in large organizations, sharing his journey with those interested, and utilizing his knowledge to help others. Our second guest is James Gamage, Director of Innovation and the Social Impact Lab at United Way of Calgary and Area and one of our co-hosts on Responsible Disruption. James leads the lab in Calgary and spearheads innovative solutions to address serious social issues in the city. With over 20 years of experience leading corporate innovation across the UK, Europe, and Canada, James is an expert in creating the cultures and processes that drive transformation. Welcome, Mike and James!
01:36 MIKE PROCEE, GUEST 1:
Great to be here. Thanks, Monique.
01:38 JAMES GAMAGE, GUEST 2:
Thanks, Monique. Great to be here and great to be on the other side of the desk, not being the interrogator. [Laughs]
01:46 MIKE: Yeah, exactly. {Laughs]
01:48 MONIQUE: Well, here's hoping this becomes a very engaging and insightful conversation for those listening and James, I'm just delighted to have the opportunity to interview you as well. So welcome to the two of you. I'm excited to have this conversation today, and I think it would be great if we started by setting the stage on what does internal innovation mean? You know, it's critical in both the nonprofit and for profit or corporate sectors. But I think defining what it looks like in both of these is a great place to start. So why don't we kick it off with that question, James, why don't you start?
02:27 JAMES: Yeah, no, I'd be happy to. So, I noticed in Mike's bio you used the word "entrepreneur" and "entrepreneurship." Is the entrepreneurship within an organization? So, it’s sort of—it’s the discipline of internal innovation. Organizations, if they want to innovate—and want to innovate in a sort of very disruptive way—often look to partner with entrepreneurs. But intrapreneurship is the discipline of being an innovator within an organization. And I guess, you know, it’s internal innovation within an organization. Now, often when we talk about it—and I think this is for nonprofits and for-profits as well—the evolution of an innovation discipline within an organization often starts with, you know, a discrete team that is tasked with being the innovators within the organization. And I think that’s probably a good approach initially because it helps to give it oxygen, it helps to give it focus, and it helps to allow it to establish itself over time. And this is the journey that we’re going on within the United Way. What the evolution of that is, is to move to a more holistic view of innovation across the organization, whereby, you know, internal innovation is about enabling the whole organization—and people across the organization—to be more innovative. So, that’s sort of the way that I would position it.
04:11 MIKE: Of course, James takes all the best answers, right? Right out of the gate. I was—I'm looking at my notes here, matching it up, and I'm like, "OK, cross off, cross off." I think it's a really good point. James, I’ll leverage something Shannon Phillips from Unbounded Thinking shared—a really good definition of entrepreneur versus intrapreneur. He said entrepreneurs just have passports. And since hearing this definition, I’ve really changed a lot of my thinking. Like, what can large corporates do to keep these innovative intrapreneurs engaged, creative, and implementing their ideas while keeping them within the organization? Because I think they can achieve untold growth. We talk a lot about this at the Calgary Innovation Peer Forum. When we think about internal innovation, James, you hit the nail on the head with how you were mentioning internal capability and how you set this up. What I think is really critical here—and something I always try to remember—is that innovation is different to everybody. We have, you know, 20 or 30 people in the room at the Calgary Innovation Peer Forum, so as a result, we have 20 or 30 definitions of internal innovation and what that means to them. The definition doesn’t matter as much as communicating that definition, finding something that works for you, and getting everybody aligned on it. That’s the core thing we try to emphasize. Personally, I think of a culture of innovation as a culture—not specific initiatives or projects. It’s something that you want integrated. It’s not just digital, it’s not just technology.
I’m a big fan of Deloitte’s Manage Your Innovation Portfolio framework. I’ve looked at a lot of frameworks throughout my DBA—there are a ton of different ones that exist—but I’ve quite enjoyed the ones that break it into three buckets: core innovation (sharpening the saw, doing things better), adjacent innovation (same customers but different or slightly modified products), and disruptive innovation (what are you doing for new customers and new markets?). Again, that resonates with me because you can split your portfolio across those categories. But for a different organization, they might lean more into disruptive or core innovation, or they might use a completely different framework altogether. So the most important thing for any internal innovation team—or any large corporate looking at this—is to define it within your organization, work to communicate it, and figure out what’s going to work for you.
06:34 MONIQUE: I love that you're talking about defining as a starting point. I mean, James and I have talked a lot about the Deloitte Innovation Framework and a few others, but we definitely lean there. I am super curious, though. James, as you talked about the evolution of the discipline, and Mike, you talk about how to start and get grounded. When we think about what that means in the context of time, you know—what can an organization expect? Is this a process that takes six months? Four years? I mean, if we were guiding individuals in these two sectors to think about setting up an innovation practice, what should they be setting themselves up for?
07:26 JAMES: Good question! And I really loved Mike’s last answer when he talked about the culture and, you know, the old “culture eats strategy for lunch” or breakfast or whatever the quote is. If you’re operating in that kind of world, you’re trying to create—in the culture—you’re trying to create the right conditions for innovation to thrive, which is really what we’re trying to do. There’s a tension there because boards, executives—whoever the stakeholders are—when setting up and spending money on an innovation capability across the organization, are probably going to expect relatively short-term returns. And the reality is, this is a longer-term endeavor. To really change the culture and allow innovation to thrive across the organization takes time. That’s where the key tension lies. Again, this is common across nonprofits and for-profits—it’s the same issue. That tension between short-termism and the need for something that’s more cultural-based, which will take time.
08:42 MIKE: And you need to balance that, James. Like, I’ll piggyback on that—the dual mindset comes up a lot from strategists about balancing your short-term portfolio with your long-term portfolio. I think right now—and I’ve been in corporate innovation for maybe 10-plus years, and I’d kind of categorize my earlier work there as well—we’re in a very interesting time. In Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and globally, with high interest rates right now, I think it kind of shifts people’s mindset more toward core innovation or short-term innovation, like continuous improvement. You need to put scores on the board. And I think the energy industry is amazing at this. It’s very used to booms and busts. And what happens in the busts? You need to focus on your efficiency and productivity. A huge amount of innovation in the energy industry comes from this—different industries as well when they experience these cycles. Then during your booms, you can plant more of those seeds for the future and try to balance it. So, it’s been really cool to see in the current climate where people are going and what they’re shifting toward. And again, it’s the long game. Like James said, you want to plant the seeds now for the future while also distributing your short-term wins so that leadership has confidence that, yes, this team is heading in the right direction.
10:01 JAMES: Yeah, I love that the portfolio approach is I think key there. When I talk to people about setting up innovation capabilities, those quick wins and the reality is a lot of those will be core innovation. You know, continuous improvement, productivity improvements, things like that. But that helps to satisfy stakeholders in the short term.
10:23 MIKE: And talk about no better time than now with generative AI, ChatGPT, and Copilot. I won't go into it too much because you can't throw a stone without hitting a podcast talking about generative AI right now. But I will say the amount of opportunities for productivity increases and efficiency increases using these tools is incredible. I've seen some companies use these in very creative ways across the board, and it's really a great time to look at it. Even podcast generation—you’re seeing completely AI-generated podcasts now. I don't find them the most engaging right now, but you can still create them, right? And it's easy to see that in 2–5 years' time, they can easily expand at that rate to where they are even more engaging, perhaps.
11:07 MONIQUE: I love that because I think it really helps us understand and reflect on how much innovation has really evolved over the past years. And I think, Mike, you know, speaking to generative AI as something that has changed, I’m curious if there are other, you know, mechanisms, frameworks, or approaches that you’re both seeing when we think about internal innovation changing, you know, pre-COVID, post-COVID, and now with, you know, new advancements in technology.
11:40 MIKE: Maybe I’ll jump on that one, Monique. An interesting shift I’ve seen that I really liked—only because it’s aligned with my internal values, so it might not resonate with everybody—is this shift from innovation being a technological or digital core competency to a cultural one. I’m seeing a lot more collaboration, a lot more openness, and a lot more companies that, you know, might be considered competitors, both coming to the table and working together on the same problem. And I think this collaboration and cultural aspect is huge. A great example of this—shout out to Energy Disruptors, which just occurred here, I think, in the last month—is, you walk into the room, you feel the energy. You have, I think, every innovator, every corporate entrepreneur, every entrepreneur in Calgary around that room. And you can see everybody coming to the table, exchanging ideas. That’s what true innovation is—it’s those collisions, it’s that collaboration. It doesn’t happen in a silo by itself. They talked a lot about nuclear, they talked a lot about data centers, they talked a lot about carbon sequestration, robotic process automation—like everything across the board. But it starts with the culture. And I do believe that if you can create a culture within your organization that’s open to new ideas, your innovation team doesn’t need to be those subject matter experts. Your innovation team doesn’t need to be the implementers. Just focus on the culture, remove the barriers, and people are going to do what they’re wired to do, which is innovate.
13:12 JAMES: Yeah, no, I’d love that approach, and I’m very pleased to hear the shift that you’ve seen, Mike. One of my pet hates is innovation equals technology. And if that is shifting, and if we are opening our minds to collaboration and convening different groups to try and solve some of these, you know, systemic issues within society, which—climate change and some of the things that—and the impact of that—is obviously affecting the energy industry, it’s nice to hear that the approach they’re taking is a bit more cultural and less technology-focused.
13:59 MONIQUE: I’m super curious and digging in a little bit, though, on—because there is this shift that occurs, you know, from tech-driven innovation to maybe cultural innovation. How does that play out when we start to think about, you know, organizations that are driving innovation because of their mission versus organizations that are driving it because they need profit? And, you know, how do we—yeah, how do we understand that relationship? I’m curious if we could spend a little time talking about that. So, pointed question. Oh, sorry, James. Go ahead.
14:31 JAMES: Yeah, Yeah. Well, no, go on you.
14:35 MONIQUE: Well, I'm gonna say maybe a pointed question is, how does mission driven innovation differ from that one of profit driven innovation and is there a distinction?
14:51 JAMES: I think the way I would answer that is—and this is a tension that I feel—is that, you know, profit-driven or maybe even short-termism drives you to process a bit too much. And, you know, I’m a great advocate—this is where the tension I feel myself. I’m a great advocate for, you know, a design-led approach and all the processes attached to that design-led approach, and we talk loads about the double diamond, as you well know, Monique. The reality is, I’m not sure you can process your way to breakthroughs. And...
15:40 MIKE: You can't build a better light, a light bulb or a candle over and over again and expect to get the light.
15:44 JAMES: Yeah. And, you know, some of the issues—and I know we focus on within the social sector—are so systemic and so profound. Incremental innovation, core innovation around what we're doing and the systems that we operate in currently, I'm not sure we're actually going to solve them over the long term. So the tension I feel is that, you know, yeah, it's an interesting sort of crutch to have the process that we follow, but the reality is, you know, as we've talked about already on this podcast, you're going to get better breakthroughs and more interesting innovations if you create the right kind of culture to allow people to explore, to look for opportunities, to engage with people that they don’t normally engage with, and that’s where the collaboration comes in. It’s great to hear, Mike, that, you know, to experiment, to fail occasionally—and to my mind, you know, a mission-driven approach is probably more achieved through that kind of culture. An organization’s mission is more achieved through that kind of approach than, you know, focusing all the time on the double diamond. So there’s a tension I feel—sometimes, you know, if you think about some of the, you know, amazing innovations that we hear about out there, like 3M and the Post-it Note, that wasn’t created by people sitting down, you know, focusing on the double diamond and thinking about, you know, discovery, define, deliver, whatever. That was achieved by the organization creating the right kind of culture and giving their people the opportunity to experiment, test, and have fun. And you know what comes out of it? A multibillion-dollar solution that would never have been achieved through a process. So to me, yeah, that’s the tension I feel actually—between process and culture—and how that plays out from a mission point of view.
18:07 MIKE: Yeah, I think, James, this was one of the things we talked most about at our first coffee when we connected, because you had deep expertise in both the corporate and the nonprofit sectors. I think the lines are very much getting blurred a little bit, Monique. And, you know, but it’s not enough to just be profit-driven anymore. You also need to be mission-driven. People are looking for that inspiration right now. What’s your why, right? The Simon Sinek "Why?" One of the things I found most interesting at the Calgary Innovation Peer Forum—when we started this thing, we had created something for corporate innovators and entrepreneurs. That was our goal. And now, we’re almost half, I believe, last time I looked, nonprofits. And all these nonprofits started coming out of the woodwork, hearing about us through different forums. And their innovation teams... I don’t know if it’s a fierce customer focus or driven out of that really strong mission-driven purpose, but I’m learning a ton about how to manage innovation programs across the board from our nonprofit partners. There is something really there where they do seem to have... I think the best way I can describe it is just a fierce customer focus. Like, we are here to help the people that are utilizing our services. And when you have that customer mindset, as we all know, that’s what’s going to allow you to innovate and make solutions that are going to work for them. So, it’s been quite interesting to see how that mission-driven approach takes hold and how it seems to have a little bit more longevity to it than some of the corporate innovation teams, which can pop up and disappear sometimes within six months or a year. So, there’s a balance there. I think people are trying to find. But that was a big learning for me from the forum.
19:54 MONIQUE: I really appreciate the focus there on being people-focused, right? And I think that might be the distinction between the for-profit and possibly the nonprofit space, or certainly the social sector. But it does sound like there might be organizations—corporations—that have figured out how to align mission and profit. I’m curious whether or not the ESGs (Environmental, Social, and Governance) that have come up as a way of thinking about our impact have had any kind of influence, and possibly connected those dots. For our users, that means Environmental, Social, and Governance, and it’s a real way of thinking about investing priorities or possibly innovation priorities. Mike and James, please, I’m curious as to your thoughts there.
20:49 MIKE: I think that's a perfect example of where mission-driven and profit align in the Venn diagram, and there's a lot of overlap there. I mean, in the Pure Forum, we have a lot of energy companies, just by nature of where we are in Calgary. The companies that are proposing elegant solutions right now, which I kind of define as solutions that help you solve that project manager's triad dilemma—where you have to choose between cost, schedule, or quality—are innovations that help improve upon all three. They're generally easier to get adopted. But the elegant solutions are also improving their ESG emissions or whatever that looks like, right? So it's lowering cost, decreasing time, increasing quality, and lowering emissions. These are tools and technologies that exist. They're things that we're finding in the startup community right now. So it's a really good example of where the mission and the profit are almost completely aligned, and you're seeing a lot of excitement in this area right now.
21:50 JAMES: Yeah, and it's interesting that the ESG report, because undoubtedly it has had an impact. I mean, I do think one of the interesting things is a lot of the responsibility for ESG reports is often within the legal or the governance or compliance department within an organization. So I wonder, to what extent that is mission-driven as opposed to something that we just have to do. But I take your point; it has changed things. At United Way, we, you know, the conversations that we have with senior leaders often talk about the "yes" of ESG and actually how to help organizations articulate the "yes" to their stakeholders.
22:39 MONIQUE: So, do we think that an impact-driven focus, such as the one provided by ESG frameworks, is better for how we operate and how we make innovation decisions?
22:51 JAMES: Yes, definitely. One of the things I've often thought about, and it's a mantra within innovation thinking, is that responding to ESGs and adopting a mission-driven approach—thinking about broader stakeholders—doesn't water down innovation. In fact, it enhances it. If you're responding to a mission-driven approach and taking into account society and the environment in the way you're approaching innovation, that's a positive. It likely leads to better innovation than strictly focusing on profit alone. So, yes.
23:40 MIKE: Yeah, yeah. And I think you have to have, you have to have a mission beyond just profit and maximizing profit. And I think that was a big shift that we've seen in the past 10-15 years. I mean, even probably beyond that, it's not enough to just focus strictly on this is how we're maximizing shareholder return. You also need to be contributing positively to an impact, whatever that is, whether it's ESG or, you know, any sort of across the board of how you're making a positive impact on the world. What's the legacy that you're leaving behind and everything? These are the things that I think people really want to consider. I mean, firstly, from a company standpoint and from a shareholder standpoint, I want to ensure that the companies I'm invested in are committed to something bigger than themselves. But also from an employee standpoint. I mean, this is one side of the equation that we haven't talked about yet, but corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, it's the number one way, I believe, to engage your employees and engage your workforce. Nobody wants to be, you know, inside a corporation that's not seen as innovative. That's not seen as moving the needle. They want to be challenged. They want to wake up every day, excited about a mission. If you truly want to align your employees, your stakeholders, your shareholders, your leadership, give them a mission because I think we all know, although I can't quote any research on this, that just money is not enough to motivate and inspire people, right? It has to be something bigger than that.
25:05 JAMES: Yeah, I mean, I love that. And especially in the approaches we're talking about with internal innovation, you can't hope to achieve that without properly engaging your team and engaging them around something that's bigger than just, you know, their pay and turning the handle on the existing process on a day-to-day basis. It's got to be an approach that will lead to greater things.
25:34 MONIQUE: I think, you know, if we go back to where we started this conversation around, you know, the evolution of the discipline and what it takes to set up, you know, a practice of internal innovation. We all know that that requires certain buy-in, and I think I'm really curious, though, on also talking about what it means when we don't have enough people focused on that work. Like, what are some of the resource constraints that we need to deal with? Because setting up an innovation practice doesn't happen overnight. And I think, James, you articulated at the beginning, it's, you know, we need to—we have a smaller team, we give it some oxygen, it grows more, there is a communication piece that needs to exist. But what do I do if I only have two people right now that I can dedicate towards starting this kind of work? How do we navigate that, and what advice do you have for organizations that are thinking they want to move in this direction but have a very small team to make it happen?
26:34 MIKE: James, are you OK? Can I jump on that one quickly because I'm excited about this one? OK, if you only have two people, this is something I think about quite often. Think about scalability of your innovation program and how do you scale that? And I love lean, small internal innovation teams. I think we've heard many examples of innovation teams getting bigger and bigger and, you know, the term "empire-building," and then all of a sudden, when things do shift or the environment does shift or you get a new leader, that's a very easy place to find resources and kind of cut costs on, right? But I'm a big advocate of keeping your innovation team extremely lean. And if I had an innovation team of two people or I was one of those two people, I'd get one of them focused on reporting and one of them focused on facilitation. And that's it. The facilitator would be going around to the entire organization, working with every single team and being like, "Tell me what you're doing that's innovative. Share your wins with me, collect your successes." And then the reporter would be creating a really nice Power BI dashboard that's taking all of those in and developing a portfolio for the entire organization. Now, with two people that aren't actually implementing, starting, or creating any new projects, you are doing an incredible job identifying your current state, and you can see your existing portfolio within an organization. Once you have access to that data, you can start asking some really interesting questions: What is our current portfolio split between core, disruptive, and adjacent? Do we want to invest more in adjacent? Where are we lacking projects? Where's our investment going? What's our return on investment? But so many times, organizations start with a somewhat larger team and they immediately go and collect all these ideas without analyzing their current state and without understanding really fully the lay of the land. And so all you're going to do is create new or redundant projects that already exist in the organization, and you're going to create a huge "us versus them" mentality and have kind of, you know, the new innovation side versus the old innovation side, essentially.
So, big advocate of actually starting with the lean team. Spend 3 months or six months to a year understanding the current state. Get everything in there. Become strong partners with everybody, and now you're also truly scalable. So when you do start getting those new ideas and identifying gaps where you can add value, don't do it yourself. Don't make the assumption that you're the subject matter expert. Have a little bit of humility and find those who are the subject matter experts in the organization and enable them. That's how you build a culture of this, not through, you know, building your own team of SMEs and then moving forward that way. Find the people in the organization that are already doing this because your organization is already innovative. You wouldn't be profitable and exist if you weren't.
29:24 JAMES: And just building on that, I love that approach, Mike, and baselining, you know, understanding the status quo is a great place to start. As you grow and as you're operating, the advice I would give is to, you know, look into what the really important issues or problems to solve are for leadership and then focus—do your damnedest to focus on how you're going to solve for those. You know, how you're going to communicate what might be happening elsewhere in the organization, but how are you going to focus the organization or tweak things or build on, you know, projects that are already there to really solve the key problems of the organization and, you know, show short-term delivery, quick wins so that you keep that buy-in from senior leadership as well.
30:20 MIKE: And merge those two things, James. Like, even if you're a billion-dollar organization and over 100 people, whatever it might be, identify, like you were saying, James, the key priorities of the organization and leadership. Then go and find everybody in the organization that's already working on those and highlight that and connect those, because our executive leaders are operating at the 30,000-foot level, but they need to see that there's alignment between what they're prioritizing and what’s actually happening on the ground. By doing that, you demonstrate the tangible impact of innovation and make it easier for them to support your efforts. What level? They don't know everything that's going on. Show them some of the good work that's already happening—that’s going to build goodwill between you and the leaders, help showcase everyone, and build a little bit of trust. Then, that's a good first step in understanding the current state. And, like you say, James, fill those gaps and make sure you're addressing their problems.
31:02 MONIQUE: I think that's great. I really think both of you have given our... there is a bit of a roadmap to actually think, "If I'm going to do this, how do I set this up and where do I start?" Both of your experience and expertise have really, I'm sure, helped inform that. I'd like to talk a little bit about how we manage risk. I know something that we've been... something that I've experienced is we obviously work in the social impact lab, and I think the word "lab" has created this sense of acceptance of experimentation and that it's OK to fail. So that has been an accepted way of working. But not every organization has a lab. You know, there are these wonderful innovation teams bubbling up inside, we're trying to create or foster a culture of innovation, but how do we manage the fact that we need to be comfortable with the risks that come along with innovation, with the fact that, you know, it might mean that we don't have the perfect next step or that perfect solution? I'm curious if you could both speak to that from your experiences.
32:14 JAMES: I think I'm going to jump on this from a nonprofit point of view. This is one of the areas where for profits and the energy sector, but are light years ahead of the for profit, the nonprofit world. And what I've observed is a very sort of binary view on risk within nonprofits that is really difficult to get over unless you have the right kind of senior leadership, you know, driving the innovation approach. It's like, "Are we willing to take risk or not?" And if we're not, we really don't do much. What I've observed in for-profit organizations is the concept of "What's acceptable risk?" You know, where, if you think about sort of the risk portfolio and the different types of risk an organization might face, are we willing to accept a little bit more risk there? You know, safety risk in the energy industry is like, "That's binary. We're just not willing to compromise safety for anything." But there might be other areas of risk that we're more open to, and that's the kind of framework—a risk framework—that allows innovation and innovation teams to operate. We're not looking at risk from a binary point of view. We're not just saying, "Well, it's risky, so we can't do it." And I think I'm sure, you know, you operate in a world, Mike, where there's a lot more sophisticated view of risk and how it's managed.
34:09 MIKE: Yeah, I might say that I'll let my engineering side take over here a little bit, and I've been a firm believer my entire life that more risk equals more reward, even in how I run my personal life, my public life, and my professional life. More risk always equates to more reward. And I think, again, I'll go back to what I started the podcast with: whatever that risk appetite is for the company, that's OK. Just make sure you define it, talk about it, and be purposeful about it. If we truly believe that more risk equals more reward, then a good basic metric that most organizations can agree with is your return on investment. Start looking at your return on investment for your project portfolio, and if it has a higher return on investment, odds are you likely have more risk inherently in that return on investment. Then you can actually define a threshold for yourself. Is it 8%, 10%, 15%? Communicate that and work within that. Now, of course, I'm sure your listeners are thinking, "Well, the massively disruptive innovation projects, you're not able to define that return on investment," and that's true. So I'd say use a methodology that works for you to work through some of those earlier steps so you can get a rough idea of what your return on investment is and then try to use that and implement that. That's going to allow you to determine what sort of risk appetite you're in and then communicate that again to your employees, your shareholders, your stakeholders, and give a very consistent message. What can be very difficult for employees is if you're in an organization and you hear from your executive leadership team, "This is what we do as a core; this is what we're looking for," but then we're also looking for these ideas, and then people leave, you know, the town hall or whatever it is... Saying, "OK, well, are we going for big, risky, disruptive investments, or are we going for core sustainability investments?" So define it, think about it, and then communicate it are probably the three big things that I would say you want to ensure that you implement there. And again, what works for one company is not going to work for another. If we just list companies in our head—like Apple, Tesla, CNRL, Novus, Husky, you know, whatever those companies are—you probably already have some sort of ranking in your head on how risky they are. And odds are, that's probably well established culturally within the company as well.
36:29 MONIQUE: James, want to give you an opportunity here too.
36:32 JAMES: Yeah. No, I think that's it. Yes, risk and reward—that's in that, you know, another thing that I think is we struggle with within the nonprofit world, actually accepting that taking risks could lead to more reward, and that's a balance that I don't think we're—again, we're pretty unsophisticated about. One thing that I would just layer on top of what Mike said in our world is that, you know, there isn't always a financial return. It could be about return on social impact, return on impact and social factors, which is difficult to measure. But I buy what you're saying there.
37:21 MONIQUE: I've really, I really think you've both provided so much insight into ways not only to set up an innovation team but really to think about what it means to have an innovation practice and what are the steps we should be thinking about. But I'm sure our listeners are probably thinking, "If I was to do one thing, what's that one thing? Where's that one? What's that one thing I should do?" You know, if we are thinking about fostering a culture of innovation or trying to foster innovation within organizations. Yeah. What's the advice you would leave for our listeners, whether they're a leader? You know, we're all leaders in our way. But I think regardless of title, I think that's an important distinction here, regardless of title.
38:09 MIKE: It's easier said than done for corporate innovators and entrepreneurs, because anybody in the space as an innovator is extremely creative. They want to make new ideas and create new things. But I would say the one thing that everybody should be doing is understanding your current state, and I don't think we do that enough. I know personally I don't do that enough. Whenever I start a new project, I'm excited and I go and create something new rather than fully understanding the current state. When I'm teaching at MRU and we have, I'm a sessional instructor there for entrepreneurship and innovation, I start every class by saying every idea you can ever think of has already been thought of. There’s 7 billion people in the world, everything already exists out there, and although that might sound a little bit demoralizing, it's actually meant to be inspirational. Because what you can do then is learn from where they failed, learn from where it fell off. There's a reason why you thought this was a new idea, because it might not have been adopted by the mass market yet. Learn from everything they were doing and then correct and pivot and improve upon that. And this is how, as humans, as a civilization, we kind of keep moving forward and keep getting in a better state because we have the ability to learn from one another and create. So, number one thing: understand your current state. If you are in a large organization, go and start collecting the existing projects. Go and understand from leadership what their priorities are. Spend a good, you know, three months to six months just understanding your current state and then, and only then, start thinking about the future state and what you want to change. That would be my advice to anyone looking in the space.
39:48 MONIQUE: Thanks, Mike. James.
39:48 JAMES: I think that's great advice for starting out. I mean, it's a little bit, you know, mother hen and apple pie, but I think the role of leadership within innovation is not dissimilar to, you know, good leadership in an organization anyway. Set a vision, create objectives that people can buy into, and distribute those objectives across the organization. Bring resources, then empower your team to meet those objectives and basically get out of the way. Allow them to operate. Allow them to try and solve those problems without constant intervention. Only intervene when you're helping them, bringing resources, or clearing roadblocks—and when asked, make clear decisions. So, you know, the role of leadership, I think that's a great approach that Mike took around understanding your current state, but then there are just leadership behaviors that are common across many disciplines but I think are really relevant in this space as well.
40:58 MIKE: And as you say that, James, like getting the leadership involved and involving others, one of my previous mentors in the past said, "Make sure everybody can see themselves on the team. Everyone has the ability to innovate. Everybody is doing good, creative work. Involve others as much as you can. If you're operating in any sort of silo, that's going to slow you down quite a bit." So, yeah, along with buying in and getting leadership trusted and aligned with clear decisions, like James said, work with others too, and get everybody aligned.
41:28 MONIQUE: That's great. Thank you, both of you. I'm just so happy we could have this conversation. I did have many moments where I wanted to jump in and be a guest at the same time. So, thank you for that. And I think really digging into what internal innovation means and looks like across both the nonprofit and corporate sectors helps us see that, although there are differences, there are so many things that we can learn from each other in how we approach this work—how we approach setting up a culture, bringing in stakeholders, getting buy-in. So, thank you both for providing roadmaps for our listeners on how to make that possible. We have an opportunity to have another conversation, and while the goals, you know, differ between these two, I think there's a lot more common ground, and we were able to uncover that today. So, join us again for another episode of Responsible Disruption. Until next time.
42:29 MIKE: Thank you very much. Thanks Monique. Thanks, James.
42:32 JAMES: Thank you.
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42:35 MONIQUE: That's all for today's episode of Responsible Disruption. Thank you for tuning in and we hope you found the conversation valuable. If you did, don't forget to follow, rate, and share wherever you get your podcasts. To stay up to date on future episodes and show notes, visit our website at thesocialimpactlab.com or follow us on social and until next time, keep on designing a better world.
