*    *    *    *    *

I often hear that Washington creates too much regulation.

As a pro-business moderate Democrat who served in Congress [...]]]> Note: A Black Swan Event is an unexpected crisis that is difficult to resolve, often involves government intervention, and represents a major threat to you and your business. 

*    *    *    *    *

I often hear that Washington creates too much regulation.

As a pro-business moderate Democrat who served in Congress for 18 years, I have a unique viewpoint.

Members of Congress want to do the right thing for their district, their state, and the country. There are legitimate areas where the power of the corporate world needs to be tempered by safeguards to protect the safety and welfare of citizens.

But after 20 years of counseling clients, the truth is….

When Congress talks “reform” for your industry, it’s time to move into high gear to protect your interests.

Reforms are proposed with the best of intentions. However, legislative language that is drafted to rein in the bad players can, and often does, inadvertently hurt the good players like you.

My experience is that the unintended consequences of governmental action is one of the most frequent threats to your business.

That’s why you have to get involved early in the legislative process and become part of the debate.

Here are 5 steps to follow to guard against Black Swan legislation:

1.  Meet with your own Member(s) of Congress to explain your concerns and outline the adverse economic impact at the District and State levels. If you have a major presence in more than one geographical area, include visits to multiple Members of Congress. It is important that your Members of Congress be your active champions.

2.  Broaden your scope and meet with key Members of Congress with committee jurisdiction over your issue area. Be sure to advise your champions of these efforts and seek their participation.

3.  Provide letters of support from a wide range of interested parties. Show the impact of the reforms and highlight the unintended consequences.

4.  Work closely with Congressional staff on shaping reform language. I’ve seen cases where one word in legislation can create a slew of unintended results. Offer suggestions that achieve the original goals, but can be implemented without adverse impact on you.

5.  Stay involved. It is always better to be part of the solution rather than an adversary.

Your mission is to positively impact the direction of the legislation and to become a trusted resource for best practices whenever your industry is discussed in Congress.

In Washington, being part of the solution is your best protection against BLACK SWANS.

Marty Russo

First of all, an Impossible Future is the derivative of leadership that is authentic and passionate. An Impossible Future is [...]]]> It’s always good to think about an Impossible Future, whether in your first 100 days or beyond, because it is such a power vehicle for transforming an organization and achieving extraordinary and tangible business results.

First of all, an Impossible Future is the derivative of leadership that is authentic and passionate. An Impossible Future is a greater goal that connects everyone in the organization to a higher purpose and to higher performance. It is much bigger than the usual “self-serving” vision or mission statement like, “We want to be the number in the industry.”

For example, Ratan Tata, of Tata Motors in India, while driving through Calcutta, would often see families riding motor scooters with upwards of three to four people on a scooter. It was not unusual for these scooters to get into traffic accidents. One day, he declared he was going to build a car for $2500 or less, without even talking to his engineers. This Impossible Future in service of a cause became a powerful source of identify for everyone in the company, which later led to astronomical sales performance figures.

An Impossible Future is not just a “stretch goal” within the status quo – like moving from a $500 million company to a $billion company by doing the same thing better. An Impossible Future is a whole new possibility. It usually start with a declaration, like Steve Jobs made when he said he would change the world with the personal computer, or even taking a big bureaucratic organization and making it entrepreneurial and fleet a foot.

An Impossible Future almost always provides a whole new strategic framework that sets your organization apart for all the other “me too” competitors. It’s not about owning the market by claiming to be the biggest, as many banks have done and run right up through the financial crisis they helped to precipitate. It is about disrupting the market with a game-changing product or service, such as Mohammed Yunus of Grameen Bank did when he provided micro financing to people that big banks wouldn’t touch.

It’s important to keep in mind, that it is not just what an Impossible Future is (words on a flip chart or plaque on the wall), it is what an Impossible Future does in terms or raising the aspirations and motivations for everyone in an organization.

Imagine the engineers at Henry Ford’s auto plant trying to design an assembly line that would enable the company to mass produce cars, cars that they themselves could buy. Imagine the scientists working at Los Alamos New Mexico on the Manhattan project to build a bomb that would stop the Nazi menace and put an end to militant Japanese imperialism. Imagine the design engineers at Apple working all night long to figure out the design for the iPhone that would be totally irresistible.

What is your Impossible Future and how will it change the world?

I found [...]]]> Jay Abraham, a dear and brilliant colleague as well as one of the most eloquent, magisterial business writers I know, sent me a fascinating email yesterday. The title was: If a Tree Falls in the Forest and There’s Nobody Around, Does It Make A Sound? OR…Is There ANYBODY Out There Listening/Hearing Me/You/YOUR CUSTOMER?

I found this email very stimulating with respect to being a Game Changer in any industry. So like a member of a Jazz combo, I am going to collaborate with him improvisationally.

Jay starts off sounding a strong, authentic, mellow, Myles Davis like riff by saying… “So ok, when a tree falls in the forest, it still DOES vibrate, right? Well, when a prospect, client, fan, follower evokes the need to be heard – do you feel their vibrations?

Nearly twenty years ago I started showing people how to ‘feel and hear’ their market’s pain. Those that put their marketing ear to the ground (figuratively) and listened, connected at unimaginably deep levels with their prospects who rapidly transformed themselves into loyal, passionate buyers/clients.”

Listening through these deep soulful rhythms, it dawned on me that the ability of business leaders to change almost always starts with the ability to feel the market’s pain is what led to game-changer companies – like FedEx, Starbucks, Priceline, Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton, Zappos, LL Bean, Amazon, Disneyland and many others. Yet how do you feel the market’s pain? You don’t do it by delegating to an ad agency or R&D lab in the woods. You do it through sophisticated market studies.

“Always sell one thing,” says Jay, “if you want to be a game changer: authentic, purposeful leadership. You demonstrate truly, clearly that YOU genuinely feel what they are feeling.”

Herb Kellerher empathized with the grandmother or grandfather who wanted to attend their grand-kids college graduation, but couldn’t afford to buy a plane ticket. Walt Disney empathized with moms and dads that wanted to take the family to an amusement park, but didn’t want any of the dirt or sleaze. Fred Smith of FedEx empathized with people who wanted to get an important letter delivered the next day, but couldn’t rely on the post office to deliver it in less than three.

If you want to be a game changer from the bottom of your soul, if you want to fuel exponential revenue growth and profit growth, show people through your new products, services, and carefully orchestrated customer experiences that you clearly understand their problems, challenges, frustrations, goals, hopes, and dreams.

As Jay says, “Show it through your marketing and sales pitches that you intuitively understand that your customer wants to be appreciated, acknowledged, understood. Show it through your social media platforms – Google, Facebook, LinkedIn – that you are interested in them, not just you.”

It’s my belief that the most successful business leaders have a big heart, not just a sharp pencil. Richard Branson who showed up at Heathrow to apologize to customers if a plane came in late is a good example. Yet so is the guy in the valet parking lot who makes sure your new Mercedes or Ford F250 truck doesn’t get scratched, or the super market checkout clerk that sends someone to get the loaf of bread you forgot, rather than making you run for it yourself.

Jay calls this falling in love with your customer vs. falling in love with your company, product, service, or customer service policy. Nine times out of ten, our frustrations with cell phone companies, call-centers, airline ticket counter agents, companies that sell goods over the internet come from cold hearted business leaders who infect their employees with their own lack of empathy, and lock them into some stupid customer service policy where they couldn’t help the customer, even if they wanted to.

THE INTENTION today is to shift your paradigm, animate your thinking and teach you… Rather than selling the same old schlock, observe the customer’s frustrations with every other “me to” competitor in your industry and come up with a simple, obvious, game changing innovation to make those frustrations disappear. Empathize with the customer’s pain when something goes wrong, rather than be self-righteousness with the customer service policy. Treat employees as if each one is a valued contributor, rather than chewing them up and spitting them out.

The reason, said a friend who works at Heidrick and Struggles, is that, while business schools give you [...]]]> Top search firms, Fortune 500s, and Sand Hill Road VC firms are increasingly choosing candidates who have spent a year in a business Start Up Incubator rather than those who are graduates of Harvard, Stanford, or Tuck.

The reason, said a friend who works at Heidrick and Struggles, is that, while business schools give you a good theoretical background, they don’t throw you into having to produce results in physical reality.

While there is something to be said for listening to professors talk about leadership, innovation and marketing, it can’t compare with throwing you into the crucible of leading a team, testing you in developing world-beating business models, bringing products to market, and making money.

My point is: extraordinary business leaders, the kind that produce high growth returns, develop in the process of producing extraordinary results, not abstract training programs. The same also applies to developing the high potentials in any 500 organization.

Speaking with a VP of Global Talent Development of a Fortune 100 company yesterday, I was told that they spend a lot of time identifying rising stars and building competency profiles. They then typically ship people off to Harvard Business School or a leadership development center in Armonk where people learn a competency a month.

The only problem, the Talent Development guy told me is that, while this all looks very good on people’s resumes, it doesn’t correlate to leadership development in the real world. “Most of our people come back from these programs, talk about how much intellectual entertainment the professors provided, and the great food and networking they did, but when they get back to the office, they go right back to whatever they were doing before.

He had invited me to his company to talk about using the Masterful Coaching approach to develop his high potentials. The MC approach starts with asking each high potential to identify an Impossible Future they feel passionate about and will spend 25% of their time on, as well as three burning platform initiatives for the year.

The job then is to help people to develop their leadership ability in the process of achieving what they need to achieve. The masterful coach provides power and velocity through using our 12 Catalytic Coaching Conversations. These conversations are employed as people do things like: get buy in from diverse stakeholders, bring a team together, get objectives agreed upon, mount projects, clear hurdles, and most importantly make or save the company money.

Does this approach actually work? As one client at Conoco Phillips told us, “We pretty much stuck to the Masterful Coaching approach and it made the company $100’s of millions of dollars?”

Masterful Coaching offers three programs for high potential development: 1) Become a World Class Executive, 2) Build a High Performance Team, 3) Develop Rising Stars.

Can we talk candidly for a few minutes? This is one of those conversations that could alter/redefine your business future…but it may be painful to hear.

The New Year that’s upon us could…possibly…be THE toughest, most [...]]]> Shift yourself from the doomed world of a business proprietor into the dynamic, vibrant, possibility-based world of entrepreneurship.

Can we talk candidly for a few minutes? This is one of those conversations that could alter/redefine your business future…but it may be painful to hear.

The New Year that’s upon us could…possibly…be THE toughest, most challenging, stress-inducing, mentally buffeting year you’ve ever lived in your business.

Why? The reasons are many. But the point I want to make is NOT how competitive the marketplace is becoming. It’s NOT how different consumer buying patterns are changing. It’s NOT even a lecture about anything I teach, like my Strategy of Preeminence or my Nine Drivers of Geometric Growth.

No – there’s only one vital…critical…pivotal realization I want you to make as we start the clock ticking loudly away on this year of dramatic volatility we’re calling 2012.

As a business owner, you’re either a proprietor or an entrepreneur

Tragically, shockingly, but truthfully, something like 95% of all small business owners function as proprietors, not entrepreneurs.

Why is this fact so bad? Because your days as a proprietor – operating a “me too,” commodity-type enterprise are all but numbered. Stated less tactfully – unless you dramatically change who and what you are – your business could become “The Walking Dead” – possibly sooner than later.

I’m not even trying to scare you.

I’m writing this “red alert” to save you, pressure you, reset your belief system. I’m not doing this to sell you a thing – except, hopefully (if the shoe fits) to sell you on shifting yourself out of the doomed world of business proprietor and into the dynamic, vibrant, possibility-based world of an entrepreneurship.

Being an entrepreneur is radically different from being a proprietor of a business

So, as I examined my own goals for 2012, I realized that I ONLY wanted to work with true entrepreneurs — as opposed to business owners who function more as proprietors. Wondering what’s the difference? It’s huge.

A proprietor (as described by Peter Drucker) is a business owner who pretty much adds nothing meaningful to the business category they address.

On the other hand, a true entrepreneur is a business owner committed to continuously innovating – innovating how they conduct business and what they offer, innovating the experience people encounter, innovating the way the product or service gets delivered or presented, innovating the product or service itself.

Drucker didn’t say it – but I see a proprietor as someone who sets up a generic business that’s non-distinctive, one that takes oxygen out of the air and cash out of commerce, but frankly, contributes back very little exceptional value to the market beyond the “mere” self-serving commodity aspect of their product/service offer.

An entrepreneur creates something that never existed before that adds value to customers

An entrepreneur creates something new, creates new experiences, new satisfaction, new definition of what they do. Entrepreneurs create something different – more exciting, more satisfying, more desirable or valuable to the market.

They change, transform or transmute values. Entrepreneurs focus on changing reference models. They find ways to improve, redefine products/service experience, the process. Perhaps, MOST importantly, entrepreneurs make truly positive impacts on their market.

They are committed to being “game changers” – true innovators who renew, shift, alter, redefine their marketplace position and product. They multiply the benefits, magnify the experience, maximize the advantage–FOR the consumer. It’s ALL about benefiting the consumer!

A sobering question for the year ahead

When you look at the year ahead, ask yourself: Am I merely siphoning cash out of my market’s momentum – or am I truly adding innovative value? Am I a multiplier—or a diminisher?

Am I making a huge positive impact–or no worthwhile/significant effect, whatsoever?

Can’t answer? If that’s the case, you probably AREN’T innovating and/or adding anything meaningful, purposeful to your marketplace or their experience. You probably AREN’T making any true, positive impact!

True entrepreneurs require no certainty, instead they “feed on” opportunity. Problems are their fuel of achievement. Challenges are their competitive advantages.

But don’t think that entrepreneurship is natural, automatic and just naturally flows to some lucky people. It does not! It’s hard, continuous work – but what isn’t?

If you’re a proprietor, you need to convert and become a “Born Again” entrepreneur. How? Try this…

• Become supremely receptive to seeing change in marketing, change in consumer buying habits, change in competitive offering as an opportunity rather than a threat.
• Continuously evaluate your business and its performance as an innovator/value creator in as many critical categories as possible, i.e. product development, value added, buyer experience, performance dynamic of product, service people.
• Become obsessed (almost) for discovery, development, perfecting new things – new ways of marketing, new ways of delivering your products/service, new ways of improving the transactional experience. See your world differently than your competition.
• Learn to overcome resistance to innovate, by wanting/craving continuous breakthroughs in marketing, strategy, innovation, your business model, your competitive positioning.

Final lesson in your reality check

Everything has a limited…oftentimes shorter life and profit expectancy than we think. So, if you aren’t committed to making your current approaches (and current thinking) obsolete and continuously replacing them with innovative new ways – rest assured, your competition will do it to you and for you.

Bottom line?

Are you an entrepreneur who innovates and adds constant value and positive impact to the market–or only a proprietor taking cash out of commerce?

Whichever you HAVE been – there’s only one thing to BE today – a “full-on” entrepreneur. Remember, too, that innovation and breakthroughs may need to be started small, but their returns, pay-offs and rewards should be huge.

I’m selling nothing here…except selling YOU on performing this self-reality check. I hope you passed!

Jay Abraham

In recent months, it hasn’t just been predator banks, subprime mortgages, and absurdly high interest fees that have come into [...]]]> Occupy Wall Street is a grass roots protest against big public institutions like banks, which up until recently, have been able to avoid public scrutiny regarding principles and practices that are full of internal contradictions.

In recent months, it hasn’t just been predator banks, subprime mortgages, and absurdly high interest fees that have come into the spotlight, but other once venerable institutions like higher education.

Parents of college bound students have been asking: why should we send our son or daughter to a top school when we can’t afford it, and they may not even be able to find a job on graduation and it’s likely to leave them with huge student loan that they will need to pay.

MIT has come up with a game changer idea that may permanently alter the landscape of higher education making it accessible not just to the privileged few, but to all, regardless of their academic qualifications, financial situation, or location.

The university is going to be offering a new program called M.I.T.x which will offer the online teaching of MIT courses for absolutely no charge to students on line anywhere in the world. The students will not be able to get an MIT degree, but will however get a certificate of completion, which may be worth its own weight in gold.

MIT expects the program to be a giant hit.

These hearty Dutch explorers each pursued an Impossible Dream in service of [...]]]> What does the new CEO of Philips, Frans van Houten, have in common with Dutch explorers of the past, such as Henry Hudson who sought to find an easterly passage to Asia, or Willem Janszoon who recorded European landfall on the Australian continent?

These hearty Dutch explorers each pursued an Impossible Dream in service of a cause, even though they didn’t have modern navigation equipment and there was no simple or obvious map to follow.

Mr. Van Houten, who began his first 100 days about four months ago after taking over from a former client of mine, Gerard Kleisterlee, is intent on another Impossible Voyage of Discovery, even though he doesn’t have all the answers when starting out.

Just like Henry Hudson was looking for a faster route to the orient, Mr. Van Houten is looking for a faster route to making Philips an entrepreneurial innovator. He is sailing the 100 year Dutch conglomerate, Royal Dutch Philips, through new and uncharted waters, marked by blue ocean strategies and game changing innovation, as well as a culture to match.

Van Houten has stood strong and firm on the quarter deck sounding the tone for his Impossible Future, while all around him a fierce storm is brewing. Since taking over as CEO of Philips, Mr. Van Houten, while lauded in for his vision, has encountered stone faced, near brutal scrutiny by the media and investment analysts due to the fact that the company has lost 1.3 billion euros and the stock has dropped almost forty percent under his short watch (the result of inheriting a top-heavy company with complex, slow bureaucratic ways, as well as a slow recover). So far he has weathered the storm with sturdy Dutch composure and grace, but inside he must feel under tremendous stress and pressure.

Permit me a flashback. I remember landing in Amsterdam not long after Mr. Kleisterlee took over as CEO of Philips to begin an assignment Masterful Coaching had been given which involved coaching Philips’ top executives. As I drove from the Schiphol Airport toward the city, I saw a billboard that said “Philips, we make things better.” I was frankly shocked. We were living at the dawn of a creative economy and age of innovation, and the company’s advertisement was “We make things better”? (Mere incremental improvement?!)

I tried to talk to Mr. Kleisterlee about going for an Impossible Future based on game changing innovation and entrepreneurship, but he was more focused on restructuring the company. I had a gut level feeling that, when I left the corporate headquarters that day in the private car which Mr. Kleisterlee generously offered, the company was at the beginning of a long, slow decline.

Now let me fast forward to the present. I had gotten wind of the fact that Philips had a new CEO and decided to study up on him. I was absolutely astonished to hear that Mr. Van Houten was preaching the gospel of disruptive innovation in his first 100 days, while at the same time, making some very tough business decisions and reinventing corporate culture with a new set of guiding principles. I was delighted to find out that the company’s slogan had shifted from “We make things better” to “We create better ideas.”

Van Houten gets his message through to his far flung organization in part by paying homage to the company’s entrepreneurial founders, Anton and Gerard Philips, who set up a small lighting company in Eindhoven 120 years ago, a poor town with only 4,500 inhabitants. Today, it’s the seat of a diversified industrial company with 25 billion euros in revenue and operating in over 100 countries.

Says Van Houten, “Innovation has always been our life blood. I intend to drive innovation with more intensity to help us win new customers.” He continues, “At Philips, we want to excel through customer intimacy, innovation, and speed. Philips has deep research and engineering competences and we are constantly looking to attract the brightest talent to do amazing things together.”

Mr. Van Houten’s response to stone-faced, straight-talking media critics (less interested in his transformational agenda than in how he is going to get the company back to profitability) has been unflappable. He never steps back from his vision and he provides straightforward, factual answers. He explains that Philips is in the middle of making a shift from a staid consumer electronics maker to a diversified industrial company.

According to Van Houten, the company has, in fact, enjoyed a higher than GDP growth rate of 5%, and its growth engines for the future (Healthcare, LED Lighting, and Consumer Living) are surging. He has declared (going out on a limb) that by 2013, based on his Accelerate Change and Performance Program, the company will achieve 4% to 6% accelerated growth (or higher), and a return 12% to 40% EBIDITA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.)

MR. VAN HOUTEN’S FIRST 100 DAYS REPORT CARD

In my book, Your First 100 Days in a New Executive Job: Powerful First Steps on the Path to Greatness, I say that a new leader must accomplish three things in his first 100 days (and going into the first year). These then lay the foundation of long term success during his or her tenure: 1) Establish a long term vision; 2) Attack ‘A’ level priorities; 3) Secure early wins that build personal credibility and momentum, as well as signal new behaviors. I hesitate to throw flowers in Mr. Van Houten’s path, but I would have to say he has been very successful in each of these areas. Here is how I would grade Mr. Van Houten (admittedly with limited inside knowledge.)

GRADE A  1. Establish a Long Term Vision of an Impossible Future.
In the great city of Amsterdam, there is the revered Westerkerk, Church of A’dam, the place where Rembrandt has been buried. In the church, there is a bell, the heaviest in Amsterdam, and when it rings, it does so with a tone that is enchanting, sovereign, and arresting. Mr. Van Houten has sounded the tone of his vision of transforming Philips from a top-heavy conglomerate into a fleet-footed, entrepreneurial innovator in a way that is just as sovereign, enchanting, and arresting as that bell.Van Houten has said, “Our goal at Philips is to pursue innovations that inspire us and help us overcome major societal challenges, such as an aging society, the rise of chronic diseases, the need for energy efficiency and a sustainable world, and consumers’ growing desire to lead a healthy and exciting life.”

GRADE A 2.Attack ‘A’ Level Priorities that Lay the Foundation of Long Term Success. Obviously one of Mr. Van Houten’s ‘A’ level priorities is to address economic performance, given a $1.3 billion loss in the second quarter. He made a number of fast moves designed to make Philips a more entrepreneurial, lean company with higher gross margins. This included more disciplined use of capital (cash on hand) through a stock buyback, and a saving of 500 million euros as a result of a regrettable 4500 person layoff. He instituted a new Philips’ program called “Accelerate, Change, and Performance Improvement” that includes such things as attacking operational issues so as to be cost competitive. Also, consistent with his vision, he committed to take some of these savings to make some big, long-term investments in R&D.

GRADE A 3. Secure Quick Wins that Build Personal Credibility & Momentum
One of the first things Mr. Van Houten addressed was building a team of ‘A’ players consistent with his high growth through acceleration Impossible Future. He added new faces to his executive team with strategic intent. He added a new head of strategy who is fond of game changing ideas; he brought the CEO of China into his board (a bellwether of his intention to further exploit the growth in emerging markets) and he hired a new head of HR Carole Wainaina, born in Kenya, to help accelerate the needed culture change. Perhaps the most important early win was initiating a spin out joint venture of Philips’ ailing flat screen TV business (a business it invented) with the Taiwan company TPV. This move would allow Philips to keep its brand name against Samsung and LG, while letting the TPV do the heavy lifting.

MY COACHING SUGGESTIONS FOR CEO VAN HOUTEN

Find a masterful coach who can give you power and velocity. When you are sitting on the top floor of the Philips HQ in Amsterdam, the winds blow cold and strong and it’s very lonely. You have a sturdy Dutch professional countenance and are holding your own, but personally you must feel tremendous stress inside your own skin. I am betting that to carry on, you are going to require a high level of personal support, the kind a masterful coach can provide. You need a coach who can return you to yourself, your vision and action when things fall apart. You also need to recognize that, no matter how smart or well prepared you are as a leader, when walking into such a big job, everyone reaches their limit. At that point, you either transform yourself as a leader or you stop making progress. Self (leadership) transformation is always good, but it just won’t get you there fast enough. A masterful coach can play a powerful and profound role in accelerating this process.

Communicate your vision and transformational agenda with every breath you take. You have put your vision out there and it is starting to get some traction, but you probably have a long way to go. You have to communicate your vision with every breath you take over the next year, versus fall into the trap of thinking “been there, done that.” As a case in point, this past week, a Masterful Coaching business development partner, went to visit the CEO and HR manager of Philips (in an Asian country) to talk to them about our new program, Game Changers (how to create block buster business models, products, and services by design). The CEO said, “Game Changer is too big for us here, (red flag) it’s a home office project.” By the way, I like the way you talk about “our new culture,” as if it already exists, using examples to illustrate this (i.e., your China team doing its own customer intimacy program, R&D, and product development). This will help keep your organization from getting trapped in the whole discouraging complexity of a ten-year culture change program.

Create leadership (management) structures that support innovative behavior. Your vision is crystal clear, as well as your shorter term goals (like 12% to 40% EBIDITA in 2012-2013). Yet, what about setting some one year Impossible Goals that will really encourage entrepreneurial innovation, the kind that accelerates high revenue growth and profit growth? Suggestion: how about asking each of your business unit leaders to present two ideas with blockbuster potential (business model, product or service) by the half way mark of 2012-2013 or so? I think this would really charge up your organization. Also, why not borrow a page from Google’s book. Larry Page asks every person at Google to set an impossible goal each quarter, one they feel passionate about that they spend 25% of their time working on. I am told this led to the Android operating system.

In closing, I especially liked one of your remarks at the Philips’ Innovation Experience. In your own words: “What I also want to emphasize is that innovation is more about passion and believing in ideas than just about pouring in money. As Steve Jobs said: ‘Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.’ He is right. For innovation, we need drive, we need entrepreneurship, we need dynamism. That’s the mentality we need to foster.”

I hope you are very successful.

Download PDF of Article