Most Companies Don’t Have an Innovation Problem | They have a fear problem nobody wants to admit

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[00:00:44] Hey, this is William Tencup and Ryan Leary. You are listening and watching the You Should Know podcast. We're lucky to have Josh Linkner on today. And the topic that we're going through is the music of business. And as you can see for those of you who are watching the video, Josh has a couple of guitars I'm jealous of in his background. So, Josh, why don't you do us a favor, the audience a favor and introduce yourself real quick. Sure. Well, first of all, great to be with you today and thanks everyone for listening.

[00:01:13] I'm a weird guy. I started my career as a jazz guitarist. I put myself through college playing music, performed all over the world. Still play today, pretty regularly. But at age 20, I started a tech company. And over the next 30 years, I was the CEO and founder of five companies, built, scaled and ultimately sold each of them. I started a venture capital fund in about 15 years ago. So, I currently invest in early stage tech companies. So, very passionate about sort of creative disruption and technology.

[00:01:42] And then the other thread is I've written four books on the topic of innovation and creativity. A topic that's near and dear to my heart, both as a musician and of course, as an entrepreneur. And I've really done a lot of research and studied, you know, human creativity and innovative leadership. And so, I have the great honor to speak all over the world generally on that topic. So, weird mix of things. Jazz musician, venture capital investor, entrepreneur, author, and delighted to be a guest with you today. There's a lot there. Right, so many questions. So many questions. There's a lot there, Josh.

[00:02:11] You start first. Well, before we get into the topic, which is really interesting. Sometimes we get some really duds and we're kind of like, what do you want to talk about? I have zero musical abilities at all. So, I'm not going to be playing any of those. But of the three guitars behind you, which is the most sentimental to you? Oh. That's cool. He's going to make you pick your favorite child. Good. Which one would you save in a fire? That's what I always ask.

[00:02:40] And then I get yelled at. I'm like, you know, which one of your kids would you save in a fire? Like, I think about this. I know, William, you go dark. But I actually thought about this. I do. Well, the older one probably can do her own thing and she's by a window. The other one, like, how do you make a choice? I'm not saving any of them. Well, this is an easier choice. Yeah, what do you got? This is an easier choice here. So, the brown one behind me is a Paul Reed Smith guitar. And it's a real nice guitar. I've had the chance to play that on multiple gigs.

[00:03:10] I'm in my physical office today. My guitar collection is actually at my house. And so, if I was going to save one guitar, it wouldn't be any of these three. It'd be one of them at my house, which is a giant jazz guitar. It's an 18-inch body. It's called a Gibson Super 400. And it's like super heavy. And the strings I put on it are so thick. They're like telephone wires. And it's hard to play. It's physically demanding. But man, it's got this beautiful rich tone. And so, that's the one I'd save. Did you ever, when you were playing bass or as you play bass, did you play the standup bass at any time?

[00:03:41] I play guitar, not bass. Although, I have played standup bass. Oh, you play? But it's not my main thing. No. I play piano and I sing. But bass, I could probably get through a gig on an electric bass if I had to, but it wouldn't be good. I'm starting to feel less and less talented. I don't have the arms. The bass players, they have the arms and the fingers for it. It's a different bit altogether. I did play guitar there in like middle school, high school. It's a thing. It's actually really, really fun.

[00:04:09] Now, with the YouTube and everything, it's completely different. Before you had to like, listen to something. If you were playing Led Zeppelin, you had to listen to it, play whatever chords you thought, and then like listen to it again and play whatever chords. Like you were just nonstop playing, stopping, playing, stopping, playing, stopping, et cetera. So where did you go to school, by the way, Josh? I went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Yeah, in Boston. And then I actually ended up graduating from the University of Florida.

[00:04:38] Sort of long story there, but a proud alumni of Berklee. Yeah, that's a great school. John Mayer. John Mayer, Melissa Eldridge, Quincy Jones, you know, many legends came from that amazing place. You know who didn't go there? So, yeah. This guy. Anyone I know. Yeah, yeah. Other than Josh. So, Josh, you've got this crossroad of innovation and creativity. When did it first kind of dawn on you? When you first started first kind of like the itch started to, you wanted to scratch it?

[00:05:09] Well, you know, these are things that kind of came naturally to me. And the truth is they come naturally to everybody if they allow it. The research, I've been researching human creativity now for a couple of decades, is crystal clear that all of us, I mean, all of us, we are hardwired to be creative. That's our natural state. Right. And so, yours manifests in the beautiful art behind you that you created. I couldn't draw a stick figure if I tried. And so, like, we all can find our muse, but we all can be creative.

[00:05:33] And if it's not in a traditional sense, art, music, dance, it can be in the way that you run your business, the way you, you know, interact with your team. And so, there's room for creativity in nearly every aspect of life. There's nothing more core to us as human beings than the act and expression of creativity. The problem is there's a lot of blockers and, you know, we can talk about that. But what happened is what called me to it.

[00:05:54] I recognize that almost all human progress is a direct result of creativity, whether it's a life saving drug therapy or, you know, structural elements of society or, you know, printing press, whatever. And we have a lot of challenges in this world, as we all know. And the solve is inside of us. It's not out there. It's here. And the way I look at it is there's eight billion people on the planet that have varying levels of dormant creative capacity. All of us. Me, too, by the way.

[00:06:18] So, I just thought, like, if I could help people unlock that, if I could help them tap into this rich reservoir of this, you know, incredible superpower, this energy to create, the world would be a better place. And so, I feel like this has been more of a calling. It's like I'm on a mission to help people unlock their dormant creative capacity, which helps every aspect of society, business, health, public safety, families, et cetera. I'm going to ask you a broad question because I have problems unlocking my creativity sometimes. I was going to say the blocker.

[00:06:48] Look, the blockers are absolutely fascinating. So, let's one, how do we go about starting to unlock that creativity? And then two, as we get into this, what are those blockers and how do we avoid them? Yeah. So, let's start with the fundamental truth is that we are all built to be creative. I've had people say, oh, I'm just not a creative person. And then I start asking about like, hey, when did you ever solve a problem in a non-traditional way? How did you achieve this level of success in your business? And they're like, oh, I guess I am, you know?

[00:07:18] Like, and so part of it is like an identity. We think we're not creative because we don't, you know, paint on canvas or do interpretive dance or something like that. So, there's an identity level that we can quickly get through. The biggest blocker of creative output is not natural talent. It's fear. So, fear is that poisonous force that instead of sharing our cool ideas, we hold them back because we're so afraid of making a mistake or looking bad or, you know, having some negative outcome. And so, we sort of tap down our creative abilities over time.

[00:07:48] Like, you've never met a six-year-old that isn't creative. 100% are creative. And then what happens, I've heard it said that kids enter kindergarten with a full set of colorful crayons and graduate with a single blue ballpoint pen. And so, our systems and processes, even well-intentioned teachers, bosses, they tend to beat it out of us instead of help us develop it. But the good news is it's a natural skill, just like breathing, that you can reconnect to and start to gain skill. So, the quick answer to your question is we've got to remove the fear.

[00:08:15] So, we've got to create a psychological safe environment where all ideas are cherished instead of judged and shot down. You've got to accept an identity that we all can be creative people in our own ways, again, in our own ways. And then the third one is starting to use some tactics and skill. You know, if you said, I want to get in shape and you want to go to the gym, a trainer would say, okay, here's a bicep curl. Here's what a bench press is. So, similarly, there are techniques and very simple tools to help us build creative muscle mass. And that's been the subject of my four books.

[00:08:42] Do you have any kind of working theory about the relationship between creativity and critique? Like, when I was coming up, I got a degree in art history, but I did a lot of art studio. And back then, you had to, whatever, if you're doing charcoal or printmaking, whatever, you had to pin it against the wall. And there's 30 other students that are going to tell you what's wrong or what's right, you know, generally speaking.

[00:09:09] Like, you know, you had to be able to accept criticism and then give criticism. But we don't teach any of that stuff in like high schools or schools in general. Some parents do. So, I'm wondering, like your theory on like, okay, how do we critique or criticism is a part of, you know, is it, I shouldn't lead the witness here. What's your working theory on the relationship if there is one?

[00:09:35] Yeah, I think it's crucial because when you're learning any school, that skill, that type of feedback allows you to make adjustments. And so, the important part though is not critiquing the artist, it's critiquing the work. And so, by the way, when I say artists, I think we can all be artists. I think everyone's job title should say artists. You're an accounting artist. You're a cybersecurity artist. You know, you're a finance artist. And all that means is that you're willing to confront traditional approaches. You're willing to explore something new.

[00:10:04] You're willing to inject creativity instead of just checking a box. And so, if we all can be artists, which I really believe we can and should be, you know, you don't say, hey, you're a terrible person. How come you did this? Why were you thinking, oh, I'm so disappointed in you? That's a personal attack. And of course, that is horribly destructive. Oh, sure. And if I said, yeah, that's not helpful. That just closes people up. So, constructive critique is crucial. If I say, hey, the brushstroke that you use on this particular thing, here's another way to consider it. Here's an invitation to try something new.

[00:10:33] That's helpful instead of hurtful. But helpful critique, I think, is crucial to the creative and artistic process. Josh, one of the, you made a comment a few minutes ago around the fear of failure. Do you think the fear of success, the reverse of that, the fear of success holds people back in this process? Hmm. Hmm. I think so, because then, like, that's coupled often with imposter syndrome. Like, if I'm successful, then I got to uphold that success. And what if I can't?

[00:11:02] And what if I just got lucky and the next time I can't, you know, and now the limelight's on me and all that stuff. So, I think fear of almost every kind is an inhibitor of creative output. You know, the other thing too is like, you know, you're talking about we don't learn that in school. You know what you also don't learn in school? Making mistakes. Like, I think there should be a mandatory class in middle school for all middle school people called making mistakes. Yeah. What's a good mistake? What's a bad mistake? How do you learn from the mistake? How do you recover from the mistake? What's a responsible risk versus a silly risk? You know, and, and, and.

[00:11:32] And like, when you think about useful skills, we all learn long division by hand. I've never used that once. I've raised almost a billion dollars of capital. I've never used that once. But I could have used a class on making mistakes. And back to the creative process, you know, we have this weird myth that creative success is like you're sitting around, you're a lightning bolt of inspiration hits you from up the heavens, and your work product is perfect upon launch. That's happened in the history of the universe never. Never. What generally happens is you have some idea, and it's like, okay, but it's kind of flawed.

[00:12:00] And real creative works come to life through lots of constant revision, mistakes, tweaks, critique, et cetera. So it's an ongoing process. It's not like a perfection upon launch. And so what happens is when we have an idea, and it isn't perfect and ready and, you know, subject to scrutiny, we then just say, oh, I'm not creative, or I'm not very good at it. And so accepting that it's a process, I think, is also, you know, really crucial. There's a great line. The one thing that all wonderful authors have in common, lousy first drafts.

[00:12:30] Love that. But it's indicative of actually what the creative process is. It's not just perfection upon launch. Yeah, you got something in your head and whatever you're going to get it out to. Like if it's music, you're trying to go get it out as sound. Or if it's painting or sculpture or whatever, there's this thing in your head. It never, it never comes out the way you first think of it.

[00:12:52] And I've got, I've got series of paintings in my head that I've never realized because of the idea of what it's going to come out and look like the first time. I'm still playing with it, trying to get it right in my head. And most artists, most successful artists, they just go. They just throw it out there. Like a lot of the writers, you read about their process. They get up, they read the papers, they drink coffee, they write for six hours.

[00:13:20] And if they can't write, they just sit there in front of the typewriter or whatever the computer or whatever the bit is. And then once the six hours is done, they go back to life. You know, everyone's got to not. Yeah, we just got to give ourselves some grace. Like we can't be such a crazy taskmaster and a perfectionist because that will inhibit creativity just like fear. How do we solicit feedback or critique in the right way? How do we not take it, but how do we solicit that? That's a good question. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question.

[00:13:50] I mean, there's probably many ways. So, but one that comes to mind is asking for specific things instead of general things. Hey, you just, you just listened to my keynote. What did you think? That's pretty broad and it's hard to answer. Or, hey, do you have any feedback on this thing I just wrote? As opposed to saying something like, hey, what was the thing that struck you the most, that was the most impactful and the least impactful from this thing I just asked you to review? Or, you know, if you were going to make one small adjustment to make this more funny, what would that be?

[00:14:20] And so I think the more specific feedback you asked for, the better. Let's say it's a physical piece of art. I'm trying to create the following three primary emotions. I want this to be evocative in this way. Is there anything that you see that could make it more evocative in a specific way? That type of stuff will generate better feedback than more generic. Do you have a way of doing brainstorming sessions or what's your current mentality, especially as a business leader on brainstorming sessions?

[00:14:50] You can go as dark as you want to or as light as you want to, but just what's your bid on brainstorming? Yeah, man, I've been studying this for a long time and put a lot of energy into it. So first of all, let's anchor in this. Brainstorming is the technique that most people use to generate ideas and it sucks and it's broken. It was invented in 1958. It's wildly out of date and wildly flawed. Here's why. Back to the point of fear. In a brainstorm session, you share an idea. Everyone else in the room becomes the idea police and tells you all the reasons it won't work and it won't put a PowerPoint deck.

[00:15:20] And so we're like shamed by coming up with an idea that as we just talked about is like, it's not going to be perfect anyway. So it's a flawed thing. Basically what it does is it produces mediocrity because we share our safe ideas and hold our more wild ideas back. Terrible exercise. So I've got a lot of them. I've developed a whole toolkit on it, but I'll give you a couple of fast ones. One of them that's fun is called the bad idea brainstorm. So two parts. Set a timer for 10 minutes.

[00:15:47] Instead of trying to come up with good ideas, come up with all the bad ones. What's the most horrible idea? What's unethical and illegal and immoral, like really bad ideas? You're not going to do them, obviously. Yeah. Right. And after the 10 minutes, look at the bad ideas and simply ask, is there like a legit flip? Could you take the essence of an idea and flip it into something that isn't bad? So you're working backwards. Another one of my favorite techniques is called the borrowed idea.

[00:16:12] And so the borrowed idea is basically you're asking yourself where else, where else in the world is something similar happening that I could borrow and apply it here. So an example of this is there's a in health care burn. Serious burns are horrible. They're very painful. They're disfiguring. They take years to heal. They apply cadaver skin. The whole process is awful. So researchers were trying to solve this in a better way. And it hasn't been changed for decades.

[00:16:38] They were studying the way that graffiti artists would tag buildings with spray in a very controlled manner. So they're borrowing from graffiti artists. They created something called the skin gun, which uses a saline solution in stem cells, and they're able to spray it on a patient, and it creates this regenerative skin that cures serious burns in a matter of days instead of years. And not painful. I mean, better in every regard. And so if they only studied the medical literature, they wouldn't have found that idea.

[00:17:05] It was going outside of their field, borrowing an idea from one part of life and applying it to the other. And the last one I'll just say real quick is, this is really fun. I hope you guys try it. It's called roll storming, R-O-L-E. Roll storming is brainstorming in character. You are pretending you are somebody else. Oh, I want to do this. So Ryan, for example, let's say you were in a normal brainstorm, and you're brainstorming as Ryan.

[00:17:31] Ryan, you might hold your crazy ideas back because of natural fear or whatever. Let's say instead, Ryan, you're roll storming as Steve Jobs. I want to do William. No one's going to... I want to do William. Amazing. Well, whoever the hero that you choose is, no one's going to laugh at you for coming up with a big idea if you're being Steve Jobs or William. And so you're liberated. You can share any idea you want with no repercussions.

[00:17:56] So you could be a famous inventor, a sports hero, a supermodel, a six-year-old kid, an alien from the future, whatever. But you stay in character and you pretend that you are someone else solving the real world problem. And it's funny. I did this one time with a group of executives at Sony Japan. I met this guy who was the stiffest human being I've ever met. Dark suit, white shirt, his tie is strangling him. I got him roll storming as Yoda. Oh! I've never seen personal transformation.

[00:18:23] Like, his jacket's off, his tie's undone, he's leaping around the room, the whiteboards are filled with ideas. The truth is, I didn't teach him to be creative. He had that inside. But there was a blocker, his role. Put him in a new role, he was liberated. So we... Idea Police. Well, first of all, that alone, that bit, Idea Police. Yeah. I love that grant. I was gonna say, so Josh, we have, we're planning the next retreat for the company.

[00:18:52] And, yeah, I can see myself being you for a day. Oh, good one. What's, you know, the idea, I used to say this, Josh, when I owned an ad agency, especially to prospects and customers. I'd say, listen, you've hired us because you want us to do not just the tactical stuff, but you want us to bring you some big ideas. And big ideas, it's been my experience, terrify you at first.

[00:19:21] At first, I'm gonna bring you an idea that, okay, or our team's gonna bring you an idea. And at first, the hairs on the back of your neck are gonna be like, ah, that's a little, I don't know if we should go that far. And then we'll kind of walk it through. And maybe we do it, maybe we don't. So the, the, the idea there is that a big idea, a big idea should almost scare you. Do you have any, is there anything in your work or in your research that kind of can prove that?

[00:19:51] Or, or am I just talking out of my ass? Which is fine. Almost. Which is fine. I'm totally comfortable talking out of my ass. I think you're right because, you know, instead of trying to do incrementalism, which generally is mediocrity, it's like you're going way to the edge. And even if you have to tone it down a little bit, that's actually a better jump. It reminds me, there's a very famous quote, which I keep handy by Arthur Schopenhauer. And here's what the quote is. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.

[00:20:20] And third is accepted as self-evident. Right. And so if someone came to you in like, you know, the year 1996 and said, hey man, I got this idea for like AI and social media and a phone where you can do video conferencing and like, you know. Ridiculed. Right. Ridiculed. And eventually then people are like, no, no, I can't do a cell phone because I make corded phones and that'd be terrible. So, you know, violently opposed. But eventually that truth becomes self-evident.

[00:20:45] And so you going in with big ideas is exactly the right way to bust through the mess and ultimately get to a good answer. All right. Okay. Ryan, you got something else? Go ahead. Go ahead. So the advice that you'd give people like, like I have this Billy Bean quote that I throw on folks every once in a while about innovation, because I want to get back to, to what you do with creativity and innovation. Billy Bean's famous for saying, if we weren't already doing it this way, how would we do it?

[00:21:15] Which allows a lot of people in the room to not think about the, yeah, the historical stuff that all that's a group, beautiful watch. All this, all the, the historical stuff that they've done. Right. Like I've done it this way for 20 years on Sally, you know, Jimmy, all that stuff. And it allows them this free space to just go, Hey, like throw all that away. We're setting up. I used to do this bit with clients too. We're setting up a shop on Mars and we're bringing three people with us. Okay.

[00:21:44] We don't have any of the stuff that we have back here. How are we going to do it? And any, do you have any, first of all, do you have similar things like that? You, that you use to kind of get people out of that mental, you know, box that they're in. Yeah. I mean, so that's a great approach. I love, absolutely love that. You know, one thing I like doing is, is, is called future casting where it's basically like, like, here's an example. Hey, our company was just featured on time magazine is the most innovative company on the planet.

[00:22:14] And they, and the whole company, the whole article was based on our culture. How do we, how do we get our culture to be so innovative? Imagine that you're reading the article and, and there, the, the, the person, the researcher went and, and, and asked for a quote from a customer, a team member and, and a supplier. What do you think those quotes might've been to that, that said how we became so innovative? Or maybe you say like, what, what, what changes from that time to this time did the, the, the, the, the writer feature that were the route to our success.

[00:22:42] So future casting basically means you pick a point in time in the future, two years from now, three years. And you're saying, okay, something cool. It already happened. If it already happened in your mind, you're not worried about executional challenges or risk, whatever already happened. How do you think it might've happened? And so you're starting at the end and working backwards. Oh, I like that. Oh, I like that. All right. I got another one I want to throw past you and destroy it as you please. So diversity of thought diversity of however you want to slice diversity, it really doesn't matter. Deserves, does diversity creates conflict.

[00:23:13] Conflict creates innovation. Can you, can you first of all, destroy it? I'm totally comfortable with that by the way. These are just ideas. Yeah. My only one I'd question. So diversity, heck yeah. And I do want to question leading because leading to the conflict, because if we come from different positions, we don't see the world the same way. We're going to have a conflict. It could be, it could be, I just see the world differently. You know, whatever that conflict is, it can be minor.

[00:23:43] And then, you know, like the way I got to this is at one point I was looking at a Silicon Valley VC firm and it was all white guys in North face jackets. Right. And, and so, you, you know, you know, the bit, right? So I'm thinking to myself, that's gotta be a very easy office to work at because they all went to the same business schools. They all have the same country club experiences. They all have probably the same wives, et cetera. Like that's just easy. We get in a room.

[00:24:13] There's no conflict. We all see the world the same way. So how do you get to innovation? If you don't have conflict and again, destroy it. It's just a thought. I don't, you know, I generally agree with that. You know, the thing that I'm stuck a little bit on the word conflict, because you're right. In many cases, it does create conflict, which in turn opens new. Yes, yes, yes. And let's say I'm playing jazz in an improvisational setting with people that are wildly diverse, diverse musically instruments, socialized, race, age, all that stuff.

[00:24:41] And we can create, co-create without conflict. So like I may come up with an idea and it's a bad idea, but it's a new idea. And then the bass player here is and picks it up and plays with it. And then the drummer grabs that rhythm and plays with it. And then, and then the sax player hearing this whole thing unfold rips a killer solo to the audience. So like whose idea was it? Well, it was diversity that drew the idea, but it wasn't necessarily conflict. It was maybe, maybe the middle word is collaboration. I don't know. But, but, but I will, I will say this because I totally agree with the core point you have totally agree with.

[00:25:13] Homogeneity sucks the wind out of creative. It's a killer. We just got to the same place. I love it. That's exactly what the point was is like, yeah, the homeo genius culture, however you define that. It's just like, there's, there's no way you get to innovation from there. I don't, or at least no way it's, it's harder to get there. I'm sure you do. Some people do, but it just seems harder to get there.

[00:25:40] So homogeneity does that also hierarchy does that because the boss is always right type of thing. Here's another coin, just cause we were talking techniques and I just love this. Um, so in, in, in tribal region in Africa, they created something called an imbezo group. I M B I Z O imbezo group. Maybe I M B I Z O imbezo group. Anyway, an imbezo group. It's basically you create a team radically diverse to solve a problem. So historically it was like the chief solved all the problems and imbezo group was like, Hey, we got this problem.

[00:26:09] Let's invite an enemy from a neighboring village to help us solve it. Let's invite a two year old child to solve it. Let's invite, you know, and so the more diversity, the better. And so I actually do this for companies all the time. So what I would do, I'll create an imbezo group. So let's say it's a, it's a consumer package, good product company trying to solve a problem. I'll bring in a poet, an industrial designer. I'll bring in an engineer. I'll bring in, you know, a five year old. And so like you bring in these weird, and it's not that any one person has the idea.

[00:26:36] It's that the, put diverse ideas in a cauldron, shake up, shake that up like a martini shaker. And all of a sudden out comes beauty. And so it's, you will be exactly to your point. The more diversity, the better. I don't know if it's conflict in that martini shaker or what, but, but out comes beauty. I love it. Drops mic, walks off stage. Idea police title. Josh, thank you. I know you're crazy busy and flying all over the world, but thank you for carving out some time for us in the show. Well, thank you. I mean, what a beautiful conversation.

[00:27:05] I wish we could keep hanging out for like five hours on this. No worries. Love your passion. And I love you. We'll have you back. Absolutely. Thank you. And thanks to the audience. Until next time.