"What is Innovation?" is back with Episode 74! This week, Jared sits down with Lorraine Marchand, Executive Managing Director of Merative (formerly IBM Watson Health) and author of "The Innovation Mindset." In this episode, they talk about how innovation thrives in environments that embraces uncertainty, being 'unsuccessful', and the ability to pivot. This episode also delves into the importance of asking, "Why?" How do you incentivize failure? What problem-solving methods do your teams use to spur innovation? Lorraine's expertise and years of experience will help you rediscover your inner child's curiosity and use open questions to pivot effectively after a "failure."
Lorraine Marchand is the Executive Managing Director of Merative (formerly IBM Watson Health). In this episode, they talk about how innovation thrives in environments that embraces uncertainty, being 'unsuccessful', and the ability to pivot.
More about our guest:
Lorraine Marchand has three decades of experience in new product development. She has held leadership positions at Bristol Myers Squibb, Covance, Cognizant, and IQVIA, and she cofounded four companies. Marchand is an adjunct professor of management and serves on the Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program Advisory Board at Columbia Business School and an adjunct professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Yeshiva University’s Katz School of Science and Health. She is also an investor-member of venture firm Plum Alley.
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Episode Guide:
1:23 - What is Innovation?
2:41 - Unveiling adulthood curiosity
6:09 - The practice of noticing
8:25 - Jeff Bezos' Amazon and incentivized failure
11:22 - Problem Solving Methods and Innovation: First Principles
12:52 - Method 2: reframing
14:01 - Method 3: Analogy / Metapor technique
16:09 - Innovation: the cultural aspect
17:05 - What isn't innovation?
17:42 - Serendipity Innovation: Upjohn company's Rogaine
19:05 - Disruptive Innovation / Big hunt innovations
19:35 - Field of Dreams Innovation
22:45 - Unlearning ways of thinking
23:28 - Innovation: Shaping Careers
27:31 - Advice to Innovators
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
/This transcript was automatically generated using AI; please forgive any inconsistencies. We are working to provide the correct and more concise copy of the transcript. For urgent need, please send us an email.
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Jared Simmons 00:05
Hello, and welcome to what is innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by Outlast consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host, Jared Simmons, and I'm so excited to have Lorraine Marchand.
Jared Simmons 00:30
Lorraine Marchand is Executive Managing Director of narrative, formerly IBM Watson Health and has three decades of experience in new product development. She has held leadership positions at Bristol Myers Squibb. Covance cognizant, and she co founded four companies. Marchand is an adjunct professor of management and serves on the healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management Program Advisory Board at Columbia Business School, and is an adjunct professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Yeshiva University's Katz School of Science and Health. She is also an investor member of venture firm plumb alley. Lorraine, I'm so excited to have you on the show today, I can't wait for you to share your thoughts with our audience and thank you for taking the time to do it.
Lorraine Marchand 01:13
Oh, well, Jared, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you very much for asking me to be your guest this afternoon.
Jared Simmons 01:19
Well, it's a pleasure. Let's dive right in. What in your mind is innovation? Well, Jared,
Lorraine Marchand 01:27
I like to answer that question by first starting with the fact that innovation is a mindset. And to me, that mindset is described and defined by three things, an insatiable curiosity, a passion for problem solving, and embracing change. And the job of the innovator is to solve problems. And most importantly, because innovation has been dubbed as more of a modern day term, it really reflects a desire to bring a new product service or way of doing something to the market, which should have commercial value, it should have commercial benefit. So to me, that's the innovator. Because we've got to start with the innovator, the person doing the innovating, where we have to start right at the head, right? And then that's what the innovator is determined to accomplish.
Jared Simmons 02:32
Okay, that is fantastic. I love that innovation is a mindset. And then the elements of that mindset are fascinating to me. Tell me more about curiosity. What does that look like in the innovator? And what does it look like in practice?
Lorraine Marchand 02:48
That's a terrific question. And I like to think back about children. And when children are growing up, and when they're two years old, if you've had a two year old, or as they go through grade school, they just incessantly ask why. And they ask those why questions until they're really satisfied that they got to the nugget right of what the issue or the problem is, and that they really understand it. And so if we think about the child's asking why, a lot of times, I think what happens is, as we go through school, and we're in such a rote environment, and then it starts to become somewhat intimidating. If you don't have the right answers to thing. Our curiosity starts to taper off as we hit adulthood. And we feel as though we have to know the answer. We can't ask why questions, and that we're going to be humiliated if we don't know the answer to something. And so what we need to do as we hit adulthood, is take off that veil of concern or intimidation, and get refreshed with the idea of asking why and not being satisfied, until we really understand the questions, the issues behind whatever it is that we're concerned about. Whatever it is that we're vexed by.
Lorraine Marchand 04:19
So when I teach innovation, it starts with helping people to get tapped into their curiosity again. So a lot of times, I'll ask adults in a fortune 1000 company, if we're going to talk about what innovation is, and so often they say, oh, boy, I don't feel innovative. That's what Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and the founders of Uber and Lyft do. That's not me. But when we start to break it down and say, You know what, tell me a time when you were 12 years old, and you did something really amazing, something that you were proud of where you were Creative or maybe we use the term innovative, you did some different you solve the problem. Take me back to that moment, when you had that satisfaction of tackling something creating something solving a problem, they might have to think a little bit, but they can usually go back and pull up that story. And that's the building block.
Lorraine Marchand 05:21
It's like you know how you felt that day, you know how you felt when you recounted that story in your mind and brought it to this workshop. That's what curiosity is. That's what we need to get back to. You're looking around at problems that you face every day, you're not satisfied with the fact that things are in a default or a status quo. And you take it upon yourself to break that problem down, maybe keep a journal of problems that you observe on a day to day basis, I usually suggest that it's a really good habit, just every day, write down three problems that you observed, it could be something that you saw in traffic, it could be the fact that your coffeemaker didn't do something that you wanted it to do properly, is just start noticing, again,
Jared Simmons 06:09
noticing that is such an important aspect of curiosity. And I've never really kind of connected those two things. But to be curious about something, you have to notice it in the first place. It never thought about that. I also love this aspect of intimidation that you've highlighted, because that's also something that you don't really think about when you think about curiosity. But we are naturally curious if our child states are any indication, we are naturally curious. And for us to have grown to a point as adult where we're not consciously curious, there had to have been some something that taught you not to be curious. And that's a form of intimidation. And it's almost this element of certainty that adults are so fond of, almost kind of creates almost like a bullying type of environment where you're intimidated into abandoning the question, why? Because you're supposed to know already.
07:04
That's exactly right. And I think that a lot of times in corporations, the way that presents itself, is that, again, a corporation exists in order to do something very well. Do it repeatedly, do it at scale, have well heeled processes have people who know all the answers. But the fact is that innovation thrives in an environment that embraces uncertainty thrives in an environment that allows us to fail, quote, unquote, right, and so much of when we innovate, it has to sometimes be trial and error. Edison invented 1000, different technologies, things however you want to describe it. Not all of them were ultimately successful. Right? Very few that we actually recall. But that doesn't mean that he and his team stopped on any given day, not continuing to innovate, because they develop something that didn't end up working out or going forward. It was that dedication to maybe this concept of continuous process, continuous innovation, continuous improvement, right? And so you have to embrace an environment where it's okay. And I won't say failure, but it's okay not to be successful.
Lorraine Marchand 08:25
one of the things that I do like about what Jeff Bezos inculcated in Amazon, was that he actually incentivized not being successful with the ideas and the products and the services that you brought ideas to the market for Right, right, incentivize failure, he knew that it was only if you felt really comfortable bringing ideas to the fore, and that you didn't get the Blue Ribbon every time they were successful. But you still got credited for trying. He knew that that was the kind of environment and the kind of culture that needed to be created for innovation to thrive. Right. And I personally, I replaced the word failure with pivot. And my view is that innovation is a series of pivots. And if one avenue that you're pursuing doesn't work out, as long as you're staying true to your vision, you can adjust some strategy, you can adjust some tactics, you can move in a slightly different direction. And as long as you're learning, and you're bringing that learning forward into your work and into how you're thinking or into the next way that you're innovating, then I think that you're creating a very stimulating and continuously improving process. That is the heart of innovation, so we don't fail, we pivot.
Jared Simmons 09:49
I love that. I love that. The great thing about substituting that word pivot, it actually moves it closer to what you're actually trying to say. Because the only word we have or what happens is failure. And it kind of tells you a bit about our society and our culture that when these things happen, you try to do something and it doesn't happen, then that's deemed a failure, full stop. And to think about pivoting, it takes the focus away from the outcome and puts it back on the action that you can take. And I really liked that a lot.
Lorraine Marchand 10:21
And I think it really dismisses this intimidation factor, right? It does. Now I'm not intimidated. I don't have to have the right answer. I just have to have moved my idea or the process forward, maybe even added incrementally to our understanding. And I can be credited and rewarded for that and feel as though I'm contributing to innovation as well, because I am.
Jared Simmons 10:46
Exactly, exactly. And this is another tried and true, almost trite phrase, it's now in the innovation world, but it lets you embrace uncertainty. So it really becomes part of how you work, you don't have to know because you can always pivot. And so I think that is a really freeing way to think about it. So yeah, thanks for sharing that. So everyone has been trained in a method of problem solving. So I'm an engineer, I worked at p&g I worked at McKinsey. So I have been trained in three very structured, very rote ways of solving problems. What does problem solving mean in an innovation context, when you talk about it?
11:26
Well, I think that it's very fundamental in innovation to get the problem, right, right. So I said, my definition to solving a problem. And I usually say a problem that a customer is willing to pay for it. That's the commercial aspect of it. So the methods that I like, are all around deconstructing the problem. And you know, Elon Musk is really big on deconstruction. And the method that he uses is called first principles. And so from a product perspective, it tears the product apart, and it gets down to the basic components. And I think a great example of that is, when he took on the challenge of reducing the cost of building a car battery, right, they said that the car batteries were $60,000, we'd never be able to bring the cost down. And he said, You know what, wait a minute. And he actually took the car battery, he took all the parts apart, he looked at what was most fundamental to make that battery operate. And he decided that it was the Chromium component, and that you didn't need a lot of the other parts in the battery. And when he brought it back to that first principle, he was able to develop that battery for $25,000 instead of $60,000.
12:45
I think that deconstruction and going back to first principles, is a great way to think about innovation. But it's not the only one. There's also a methodology called reframing. And reframing is terrific. In fact, it Disney, they use reframing. And a lot of times they have to deal with the fact that they have very long lines for a ride. And the first thing that any of us might do is say, Wow, how can I reduce the length of the queue? Can I blend different lines? Could I move them to a different ride? Like what do I do just to make sure that they don't have to stand in line so long, but the Disney innovators reframed it, and they said, Well, look, I have people captive for 30 minutes standing in line? What can I do to amuse them? To entertain them to whatever it might be? And could I make the experience of being in the line? actually fun. They do this on Broadway. If you've ever gone up to the ticket counter in New York to buy a ticket, and you're standing in line, the actors will come out in costumes. So the whole SpongeBob cast will come out and start to talk with you and joke around and have fun with the audience. I think reframing is an interesting one.
Lorraine Marchand 14:01
Bill Gates likes the technique of analogy or metaphor. So let's not reinvent the wheel, like let's say this is like, and then look at what it's like. So those are at least three different types of deconstruction methods. And then the one that we talked about at the beginning of the show here, what I'll call the four year old method of innovation, a series of wise until I'm satisfied, but you know, whichever method you're using, and I think each of them fit the situation a little bit differently. You can try all four, you can pick one, the idea is that it should get you down to that nugget, or that fundamental component of what that problem is. And then from there, I think it's really important as you've gotten your aha moments during the deconstruction, that you create a very specific and measurable problem statement. Hmm. So what happened? To what? Why? How significant is it so that you can really understand and quantify the magnitude of the problem and why it's occurring. So those two pieces go hand in hand, I think,
Jared Simmons 15:14
oh, wow, that's fantastic. I love those examples and the crisp problem statement. And to focus on the front end of the problem solving process, the front end of the whatever process, you want to call it, innovation, product development, whatever, to focus on the front end of the process, sometimes is a challenge in a broader organization is I'm sure you've run into as you're advising folks, because most companies, most fortune 1000 companies live on a 90 day lifecycle. And that clock is always ticking and senior leaders minds that they're going to have to answer to the broader stakeholders in 90 days. And it permeates the entire organization. And so for Disney and Microsoft and these other companies to kind of have that front end focus is really a testament to their senior leadership, and their willingness to say, you know, how brave this, you keep doing the work that actually drives innovation?
16:09
The cultural aspect of innovation is so critical. You're absolutely right, Jared. And I think that whether it's a small organization or a large organization, that dedication to the innovation mindset, has got to start at the top, it has to be rewarded this idea of the failure, the pivot, showing people curiosity looks like what problem solving looks like, helping them embrace change, making it feel safe. All of that is just really critical. And I do think that we see those organizations, definitely outpacing others, in terms of growth, and revenue, and all of the metrics that they're so keen on following on.
Jared Simmons 16:52
Right, exactly. So we've talked a lot about what innovation is, and the elements of an innovative mindset, that focus on the front end of problem solving the deconstruction phase, pivoting versus thinking about failure. What isn't innovation?
Lorraine Marchand 17:07
Yeah, well, that's a perfect question. I guess I should also say, just before we leave, what I think good innovation looks like is that it's not the AHA eureka moment. It really is, once you understand that problem, taking yourself through a disciplined process of designing solutions, testing them talking to customers, de risking them. So I believe that it's a very disciplined stepwise process, which is why I've laid that out in my Yes, what it isn't. So let me give you an example. The Upjohn company about 25 years ago, you may recall, they launched a product called Rogaine. Hmm, you know what Rogaine is used for?
Jared Simmons 17:54
I do know what it's used for. I don't use it. As you can see, the listeners can't. But yes, I do know what it's used for.
18:02
Yeah, it's for a male pattern. baldness. Yeah. But the thing most people don't know is that the Upjohn company was actually studying Rogaine for a certain type of cardiac problem. And the clinical trial participants were middle aged men, many of whom had male pattern baldness. And when they were on the product, they had hair growth. So the Upjohn company was very observant, and they realized that they needed to do something with this they revamped the clinical trials and Rogaine for male pattern baldness, launched ahead of Rogaine for the original cardiovascular indication, wow, I call that kind of innovation, serendipity. And it's a little bit like winning the lottery, it's very alluring. And we hope it's going to happen once in a lifetime. Chances are, it won't. And it won't necessarily be the kind of innovation that you or I are involved in, right. A second type is disruptive innovation. And we see this all the time. So the development of the iPhone, or the disruptive innovation of Uber Lyft. So I call those big hunt innovations. Because pletely transform business models, the way we operate, they really have a lasting impact, right? While those are really exciting as well. Those are not typically the way innovation occurs either.
Lorraine Marchand 19:35
And then the third one that I actually do see a lot, but I don't recommend it is I can give you another example. When I was early in my innovation career. I had a colleague who had licensed a diagnostic technology from a lab in Israel, and it could measure different kinds of stress in very different kinds of body fluids. Oh Wow. And it was like super cool technology, it could measure oxidative stress and any kind of body fluid. And we were rushing to try to figure out how to get this to market. And the problem was that this oxidative stress that I described, is in just about every disease process in the body. Right? So we quickly found that trying to narrow down finding indication, understand, you know, doctors, patients that might be a fit. So when innovation, you've got to be really efficient with your capital, you got to be able to move pretty quickly to solve the problem. And so long story short, we ran out of capital, and the investors got a little impatient with us. And so I call that kind of innovation where you had this super cool technology, and now you're trying to figure out what problem to solve with it. I call that Field of Dreams. That's the Kevin Costner movie, where Shoeless Joe Jackson comes to him every night in a dream. Kevin Costner lives in an Iowa cornfield. And he encourages him to build a baseball field in the middle of the Iowa cornfield, and he says, build it, they will come. So I call that kind of innovation, build it, they will come. And honestly, I see it 98 99% of the time. And I don't recommend that either. So I believe that innovation that starts with a problem, deconstructs it really clear that there's a customer on the other side who wants to have this problem solved. And then goes through the methodology of testing different solutions. My dad taught me the law of three. Growing up, we always had to come up with three solutions to every problem that's testing it for fit, or a minimal viable prototype, talking to customers, I say, 100 customers in order to get plenty of feedback, thinking about the risks. That's the kind of innovation that ultimately will be successful and bringing your product, your service, your new way of working to the market.
Jared Simmons 22:02
Yes, I love those buckets, serendipity, big hunt and Field of Dreams. That pretty much covers the landscape. And the description of the Field of Dreams reminds me one of my favorite Maslow quotes where he says, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And it's the same kind of principle around the field of dreams, I think where you've got this technology, and all of a sudden, because you have that in your hand, everything looks like an opportunity to use it.
Lorraine Marchand 22:29
Yes, you're absolutely right, Jared. So and you know, human nature just just allows us to go to solutions to take this technology and to figure out all the different ways that we think we can use the hammer.
Jared Simmons 22:41
Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Lorraine Marchand 22:44
In a way you have to unlearn. You know what I mean that you really have to unlearn how you've been trained to think, which is why I just think for me one of those first principles is going back to the way children question and how they think we can learn an awful lot if we harken back to when we were younger?
Jared Simmons 23:01
No, that's a great example, because everyone was younger ones. And so it's not one of these things that only applies to engineers or only applies to journalists or only applies to musicians or whatever. Everyone was five. So that is something you can ask people to look back at with confidence. you've alluded to the lessons you've learned from your father, you talked a bit about this opportunity you had with the technology in Israel. How has innovation shaped your career?
Lorraine Marchand 23:31
Well, when I was 12 years old, my dad who was a serial inventor, an inventor was different from innovator, because the word INVENTION, by its nature indicates that you're creating an improvement or something for which you can file intellectual property patents, right. And innovation is a more modern term, which indicates we're going to develop new products everybody can play. It's just not a sconce in a big r&d lab at Bell Labs or IBM. A lot of us can be involved in innovation. So when I had that experience of developing the sugar cube with my dad's help in a diner, one summer, when I was 12 years old, he took us to the diner, we had to observe what was holding up table turnover, and determined that it was ultimately sugar packets that was causing the waitresses and the busboys to take extra time to clean the tables in the floors. So we came up with three solutions. We took the sugar cube to prototype, it held the sugar packets that were still intact, along with the discarded ones. It had four sides to the cube so it held advertising and the diner could use local advertisers to provide advertising and the cafeteria bought it from us. It was distributed throughout the Baltimore Washington area. I learned that problem solving was fun and there was a benefit to being curious and I bought my first product tomorrow. I get with my dad's help and commercialized it. And so even though I've been in large corporations, I've done startups, I've been in medium sized companies, I've always brought that mindset with me. So whether I was the intrapreneur, in a large company, for example, Bristol Myers Squibb or IBM, I was always the one that wanted to be working on the project where there was a blank canvas, or at least not an overly populated canvas, developing or designing something new in the corporation, or when I had my opportunities to do my own startups, I wanted to create something new using the problem solving methodology. So my whole career journey has really been defined by this innovation mindset. And I think that your career is an arc. It's a continuum. It's not a destination. And so there have been times on my journey where I felt really innovative, and I was designing new things and having a great time. And there were other times when maybe my innovation aptitude had to be quelled, or it wasn't as full as I would have liked it to be. And sometimes those can be environmental constraints or other things going on in your career or your life. But I think what's important to realize is that, if you're dedicated to innovation in the mindset, it is a journey, it is a continuum, it is on an arc, you're not always going to be going at 100 miles an hour. And that's okay. But as long as you're a student of it, you keep it in mind, and you follow your path, you'll be able to tap into it, and use it in a way that's meaningful for you, and you're using it at the right time in the right place.
Jared Simmons 26:51
Oh, wow, that is fantastic. I love the Ark concepts, we experienced that careers linearly. But that doesn't mean that that's the most natural construct through which to view them. And so the idea of an arc and that you're building this career over time, and you may not even know what role this experience is going to play down the road. I love that concept. That's, that's fantastic. And going to market as a child with your dad tell, that's really cool to sugar cube. That's really neat. Yeah, I love that story. Thank you. So this has been a fantastic conversation. And I don't want to let you go without asking you for advice. So any advice for me and other innovators out there?
Lorraine Marchand 27:34
Well, you know, the reason that I wrote the book that I wrote the innovation mindset, eight essential steps to transform any industry was because at different points in my own career, when I was trying to get better and more effective at innovation, I wish a book like the one I had written had existed, that could help me avoid the pitfalls, lessons learned could be applied to me so that I could accelerate my path. And so that's what I really wanted to do with the book, demystify it, all of us have some level of innovation DNA, maybe it needs to be developed, maybe it needs to be cultivated. But as you pointed out, we were all five, we've all had a period of curiosity. Sometimes we need to unpack everything and get back to that. But I believe that people are ultimately the most satisfied, the happiest when they're creating. And I think that if we can tap into that innovation mindset, if we can recognize that we have the power, we have the ability to create, to innovate, to bring new ideas to market, new ways of working new services, that we can really get excited again about our careers, and have an opportunity to make a big difference. So I say, if you think that you would like to tap into this, you want to be more innovative, you want to do things differently, you have an inspiration to start your own business or do something different. I say don't wait another moment. Just go ahead and do it.
Jared Simmons 29:15
That is fantastic advice. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And thank you for the conversation. It's been a lot of fun, and I've learned a lot. So that's just a win win for me personally, and I'm sure other people will get a lot out of it as well.
Lorraine Marchand 29:30
Well, Jared, thank you. You've been a lot of fun to speak with and have made it very casual and conversational and accessible to have this conversation with you. So thank you so much for taking the time to have this podcast and wanting to share your insights and the insights of other innovators with all of your listeners. I'm sure that they really appreciate it. Anything that we can do to spur and encourage innovation is a good thing.
Jared Simmons 29:54
That is well said. I 100% agree with that. Anything we can do to move this conversation forward is much needed in the world today, Lorraine, Marcia and author of the innovation mindset, eight essential steps to transform any industry. Thank you so much for your time and I look forward to staying connected.
Lorraine Marchand 30:13
Thank you, Jared.
Jared Simmons 30:14
All right, take care.
Jared Simmons 30:21
We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on Twitter at Outlast LLC OUTLST LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're at less consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.