August 2, 2023 • 38 mins
Brant Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Lean Entrepreneur” and “Disruption Proof,” and the innovative mind behind Moves the Needle. With a rich history of transforming industrial age dynamics into digital age opportunities, Brant brings unique insights on agility, digital transformation, and how to create real value for customers amidst today’s complex and disruptive business landscape.
What happened to the glory days when scrappy startups could disrupt entire industries? Brant Cooper says those days are over – but large companies shouldn’t retreat into their innovation labs hoping for breakthroughs. Instead, they must empower diverse teams and partner with the startup community. Cooper provides a dynamic playbook to make companies “disruption proof” in this rapidly changing world. Learn how to balance exploration and execution, drive real impact, and create resilient yet adaptable organizations. A must-listen for any innovator dealing with today’s challenges!
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(00:02):
Welcome to Disrupt Disruption, aseries of intimate interviews
with global thought leaders and practitioners operating at the
intersection of business, leadership and technology.
We're discussing all things innovation and disruption and
how to not only survive, but thrive in these times of
exponentially accelerating change.
Trusted by CE O's founders and leaders globally for the latest
(00:23):
take on business models, methods, culture, and
leadership, we cut to the chase,debunk the hype, and get real.
You're in great company. I'm your host, Pascal Finnette,
cofounder of B Radical. Hey everybody, Pascal, here we
are back with another episode ofDisrupt Disruption, and today
(00:45):
I'm blessed to have Brent Cooperhere.
Brent is an incredible human being as a New York Times
bestselling author of a book called The Lean Entrepreneur
recently wrote a new book as a follow up called Disruption
Proof, Empower People, Create Value, Drive, Change.
As you can imagine, that fits unbelievably well to what we
(01:07):
typically talk about here in thepodcast, so we'll dig deep into
this book. He's also the CEO and founder of
Moves the Needle, has a long career in the startup and large
enterprise world behind him, andis also an avid surfer.
If you read the book, you will know what I mean.
With that being said, Brent, I'mexcited to have you on this
(01:28):
podcast. Thanks for being here.
Thank you Pascal. Happy to be here.
So Brent, I have to ask, I love the book.
I love the fact that you're taking a different perspective
on this whole topic of disruption.
If you wouldn't mind telling us and the listeners a little bit,
where do you come from when it comes to innovation and
(01:49):
disruption? What's your your starting point,
Your base? To be honest, I think my
starting point is the same as everybody's starting point,
which is usually, you know, Clayton Christensen's analysis
of the tech industry in the really in the 80s and 90s and
maybe the 2000s, maybe going back before that, I don't know.
(02:10):
And sort of his concepts around the innovator's dilemma and and
this pattern that he saw where industries are completely
disrupted by new companies. So that's where I began and I
think that, you know, I come from the startup world.
And so we were always the ones that were trying to disrupt
(02:31):
whole industries if we could do to really change the world.
I mean, we really believe that'swhat we were set out to do.
And there are certain periods inhistory where new things come
along. And at that time it was the
Internet and all of the technologies that were evolving
very rapidly in the broad understanding of the Internet.
(02:52):
And there was this opportunity to redo whole industries and the
first startup I was in was called Tumbleweed.
Basically we had technology to send emails or documents
securely over the Internet and we thought we could replace
(03:13):
overnight packages and and thosetype of things, as long as they
were documents like the way law firms communicated, it was an
exciting time. I think that those opportunities
now are far and few between. I don't think it's the same as
it was then disruptive innovation time.
I think we're in a different time now.
So curious to hear. If you wouldn't mind.
(03:34):
I would love to stay in this particular piece a little longer
because I find it striking that you say this when seemingly at
least the whole world tells you,Oh my God, AI is changing.
Everything is the biggest, you know, the biggest disruption
we've seen since the invention of the the microprocessor and
the personal computer. So sounds like you have a little
(03:55):
bit of a different perspective here.
Well, I think that there are still emerging technologies that
have that can be disruptive to society and they could be
disruptive to how businesses are.
Accomplishing their mission, butthere's no really one firm that
(04:17):
is that is taking over a completely existing market in a
I, right. So it's a disruptive technology,
but it doesn't meet any of the criteria of the way Dr.
Christensen would have defined disruptive innovation.
And I think it would be you'd behard pressed to think of
(04:38):
actually the last industry. That went through classic
disruptive innovation. I I just don't think it happens
anymore. We're not going through that
cycle of tech. And in the end, I think that if
you look back, he was probably only describing a small portion
of the economy and it wasn't necessarily something that
(04:59):
prevailed in all businesses or all industries.
And there's quite a few people out there now that have done
sort of the research and say, yeah, you know, listen, the
likelihood. Even with emerging technology,
the likelihood of a startup completely disrupting a new
market, it's like really teeny. And yet all of the innovation
groups of these large companies continue to waltz around with
(05:21):
their innovators dilemma, you know, in their backpack and talk
about breakthrough innovation. All of these concepts are
anachronistic in this day and age, to be honest, if I think
innovators need to be thinking about their contributions
differently. Not in a lab trying to come up
with breakthrough innovation. Not only are they not going to
be able to do it, it's impossible to do it that way.
(05:44):
But also I don't think that theyneed to.
So with that refreshing perspective and I love it as a
base, if you are the CEO, the Chief Innovation Officer,
whatever C-Suite title or VP title you have at a large
corporation, what are you going to do?
Well, what do we what do we makeout of this?
(06:06):
It's. To be honest, it's like any
technology adoption. So not long after college I was
I sort of became the computer guy.
We didn't even call it it yet because I was the one that
studied computer programming in college and was familiar with
computers. And you would go into these
young small businesses, medium sized businesses that were just
(06:30):
adopting. Laptops or desktop computers or
electronic e-mail and networkingtechnologies, we're just sort of
emerging and kitchen holding these businesses well.
So all of those CEO's are doing sort of a very similar ROI
calculation in the that moment. So this is the 90s and they're
saying listen, if we go and buy all of our principals, these
(06:51):
2000 or $3000 laptops, what is the return on investment we're
going to get? Well, we can.
We can fire one. Personal admin that like a group
of four partners have 4 admins and we can get rid of two of
them or something like that. So they're doing an ROI
calculation, which of course is also eliminating jobs, which is
(07:15):
also the big fear of Ari. It's gonna eliminate all these
jobs, but what you're actually trying to do is use the
technology to make those principles more efficient.
And so that they're actually able to generate more revenue
themselves at a lower cost and faster than they were before.
But I tell you even in those, inthose days, those early 90s
(07:36):
days, it was tough ROI calculation.
These businesses were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
every year or every two years, because the technology life
cycle was so short, because the software would be too.
Powerful. That would slow the computers
down and the chips would have just doubled in speed.
And so you have to like, upgradeall of your computers.
(07:56):
And it was this whole game of upgrading to try to chase this
ROI. And so again, it's not, it's not
really that different. AI has a different potential and
it's less well understood and its application is less well
understood. It touches more people.
And so I think that there's somescary elements in there to
(08:19):
people, but at its very base, it's still the same sort of
thing. And this is the way executives
should be approaching it. How might we apply a I in order
to achieve our mission more efficiently?
Not just reduce cost, but achieve our mission more
efficiently? And then as a boss, we should be
saying, how can we use a I to automate the more mundane tasks
(08:43):
that I do or my people do? And then how do I up level the
skills of my people so that theyare actually driving a big
impact. So the growth mindset is how do
I leverage AI to reduce the redundancy and reduce the
mundane, which is what AI is very good at.
How do I actually draw out the creativity and the intelligence
(09:06):
and these other things out of myemployees so that they are
actually having a greater effecton the impact in the business?
And so then if you if you're successful at that, you end up
creating more jobs than you're shedding.
And that's actually what should be the promise of AI is that if
used correctly, we're actually going to have this growth
(09:27):
mindset and we're going to figure out new things and we're
going to be creating more jobs than the ones that we're
shedding. And that is a good outcome for
technology. And to be honest, it's always
been that. And so I think AI there's sort
of a. The fear is a little bit
overblown and I think it's because it's.
(09:48):
Suddenly all of these white collar people are fearing for
their jobs and it's way overstated because A I does the
creativity and the intelligence and all of that stuff actually
very poorly. What it does very well is
looking at large language modelsand copying what's already out
there. A I The large language models
(10:09):
that are built on the Internet reinforce.
Mediocrity and conventional wisdom.
And so if you are above mediocrity and you have some
ideas that go, and that's what people should be thinking about
is, Oh no, I'm going to lose my job.
Well, you're only going to lose your job as if you have none of
your own creativity and intelligence to bring to the
(10:30):
job, right? Curious to talk about this in
the context of disruption and you very astutely titled your
book Disruption Proof. Can you walk us through a little
bit and you've got frameworks inyour book of course.
And can you walk us a little bitthrough as the as an executive,
as a founder, how do I prove myself for disruption?
(10:54):
How do I actually go about this?Right.
So it's important that to understand that in this context,
I'm not talking about disruptionas being just brought by
technology. Technology is certainly a part
of it. But again, it's not, oh, I'm
scared to start up. It's gonna take my business.
It's. It could be anybody that's
(11:15):
actually going to take my business.
So if I don't move on this new technology, other people might
go after my customers because I'm being left behind.
OK, so that's that's true. Technology can disrupt that way.
But it's also things like the pandemic, it's supply chain
being blocked or or remember, even before the pandemic, the
(11:35):
ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal and so suddenly
everybody's non redundant supplychains got affected, right?
And it could be inflation, it could be the big quit, it could
be any economic changes. So these things have always
happened. They just happen in isolation.
Pandemics have happened before. But it's this globally connected
(11:57):
world that we're living in because of the digital age.
And it's the speed of information and the speed of
disinformation. All of these things mean that
those those disruptive things. That used to be isolated now
ripple across all of our economies and all of our
businesses, right. So something that literally does
(12:18):
happen, the Butterfly and the Amazon, actually, it's affecting
us. And so that's sort of this new
paradigm that executives have tobe thinking of is that, no,
we're not done. We didn't make it through the
pandemic and now we can go back to the way it was before.
We actually have to prepare our organizations for the next
disruption. Maybe it's going to be a
(12:38):
ransomware attack. That actually hit a hospital
here in San Diego during the pandemic and I just was talking
to a a rural healthcare provideryesterday and a local hospital
system there is being shut down because of a ransomware attack.
They just couldn't afford to to get beyond that attack.
(12:58):
And so again, that's another type of disruption.
So how do I create organizationsthat can thrive and survive
these ongoing disruptions? And that's sort of the big
question. And and there's a number of
things that executives can do orshould start doing that can
start preparing those organizations to be able to be
(13:20):
aware of those disruptions that are coming to be able to respond
and change what you're doing based upon those things coming
and have the strength to be ableto to withstand those.
And that's really where the acronym RAD comes from, the
RESILIENT. You're aware, and they're
dynamic. They have this strength of their
(13:43):
founding or their DNA or their intellectual property or
something that is core to them that is like, you know, the
roots of a palm tree that go deep into the shoreline.
Yet they're also aware of the storms coming and they can
dynamically change. They can blow in the wind
without collapsing. When these changes do come, you
(14:04):
can't prevent the changes. They're coming.
So how do we prepare for them? That's an organization.
I'd be curious to talk a little bit more about the dynamic part
of this, because at least in my practice, a lot of organizations
seem to really conceptually understand it without a doubt.
I mean, there's the Agile movement, everybody talks about
agility and adaptability, and yet it seems to be incredibly
(14:26):
hard for organizations to actually pull off.
I'd be curious to hear from yourexperience as you're writing
also in the book, about how do you do this as an organization.
Yeah, it is very difficult and Ithink that Agile is one example
of a good way to go. I think that the problem often
is that people are more focused on the processes of Agile as
(14:49):
opposed to the behavior that's needed to be.
Agile And so I think that there's these large top down
implementations, process heavy implementations of Agile that
completely forego the principlesthat were first outlined in the
Agile Manifesto. And I think the Agile Manifesto
(15:11):
should be like right there in your hip pocket no matter what
you're implementing, because youwant to get back to what those
core principles are. And that has a lot to do with.
Empowering teams to be able to do their own work in service to
what the mission of that team is.
And that's still very difficult for leadership to do and to
understand. And to be honest, employees
(15:35):
don't even know how to act in anempowered fashion.
So there's a part of the book where the leader is saying, you
know, how come I can't just say go be agile and my employees go
be agile, right. And as opposed to wait a second,
you actually have to teach the skills.
You actually have to work with them so that they understand
what it means to be empowered. You actually hold them
(15:56):
accountable in different ways. You can't have empowerment
without accountability, and it requires this change behavior
not only of all of the team members, but also of the middle
managers and of the senior managers.
And those changes, you don't getthose from reading a book and
you don't get those from being told how to do.
You actually have to practice the behavior.
(16:19):
And when we're engaged in a large way with a large
organization, we'll spend 90 days with five teams of 10
people and different layers of management.
And we'll have that group practice that new behavior for
90 days. And after the 90 days, we might
have to hang around a little bitto help them, but they can start
acting in that way. And now you've got this
(16:42):
beachhead inside of your companythat is agile and then you have
to start working from there. How do you?
Begin to proselytize other partsof the organization to work in
the same way. It's a long journey.
It's a long journey and it's difficult.
But I think that the alternativeis just as you said, you're not
(17:03):
prepared and you have all of these disruptions that come in
and you're going to turn over your C-Suite every five years.
And you're going to go acquire companies and you're going to
divest these companies and you're going to do reorg after
reorg. And I think that that's a slow
sync to ultimately failing completely.
In this context, where do you typically when you engage with
(17:26):
an organization, where do you typically have them start?
Like what's the starting point for that journey for you?
Yeah. It kind of depends on who's
bringing this in. In the last case with the
medical device company, it was their digital.
Group and they had already bought into the digital
transformation. They have all this opportunity
digitizing their products in ways IoT eventually a I and they
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have no shortage of ideas. This is why everybody that does
idea challenges, it's a waste oftime.
There's no shortage of ideas. It's really how do you generate
the evidence that these ideas are any good.
And then that's what we're we'reteaching them.
So we go in there, they've got these ideas.
We've got five teams. You know, the teams are
essentially the two pizza sized teams, 5 to 10 people, and we're
(18:13):
teaching them how to go out and talk to customers, how to run
experiments to bust through yourassumptions, how to use evidence
to help make your decisions. How do you share that
information with leaders? How do leaders respond to people
that are working in this exploration style of working?
And then how do you balance the execution and the exploration?
It's like once you've learned something.
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You don't continue to explore, you actually have to start
executing. Everything has to be this
balance between exploration and execution and that's what we're
we're teaching those. We have very handson intensive
coaching that we're doing over 90 days.
So interesting, curious to hear.And this goes of course for
(18:57):
everybody who reads the book. You've got this beautiful
illiteration of five E's which speak to exactly what you just
what you just described. I'd be curious to hear kind of
like the anti pattern like the when you when you see this not
working. Like have you seen any patterns
where it's like this is where I feel companies trip over their
(19:19):
own 2 feet on a regular basis? Well, yeah, I think to be
honest, this isn't for everybody.
So there you do find there are people inside the organization
that just cannot or will not don't want to work this way.
And that's fine. I think that there are places in
the organization for those people to be.
(19:41):
And so it's good for you to sortof learn.
We typically have rates of over 90% of these employees that
never want to go back to the waythey were working before because
it's exercising their creativityand their intelligence in ways
that they weren't before. They get to be solving problems.
They feel like they're driving impact, not only for their.
(20:04):
Team and their group, but also for the whole company and but
becomes powerful. And I think it's important to
note that in this age of burnoutand the big quit and all of
these things where people are frustrated with their work and
all sorts of studies that say that employees wanna feel in
line, they wanna work for it with the ethical companies.
They want their companies to be more sustainable and more
(20:26):
diverse. I mean, the people want this and
if you start empowering them to work in these new ways, those
are the people that you're goingto be able to keep and that
you're going to want to keep. I think that the tripping point
tends to be leaders who don't really understand this concept
of empowering but also hope holding accountable.
(20:47):
And sometimes they step away toofar and you have to kind of
teach them to come back in and ask the right questions.
Or other times there's a cultureof there's such a culture of
respect that that there's no what Brené Brown would call
respectful run rumbling. There's no, there's no sort of
open, direct dialogue about whatshould be done or what's wrong.
(21:11):
Or you can't, like, critique another person's ideas because
that's disrespectful or something, as opposed to
learning how to do that in a respectful way.
You can't just let everything slide.
There are these cultural elements that sort of have to be
worked through that are often difficult to overcome.
But primarily, I think that middle management doesn't get
(21:35):
much investment inside of these large organizations and they
don't get the training that theyneed.
And they probably were never trained to begin with.
They moved up somebody from a team member to a manager and
they didn't get any training. And these people are great at
the technical abilities that they have, but maybe not great
managers. I do think you just have to
invest time in developing the skills of these people.
(21:56):
Because when people are working in this uncertainty mode, you
can't just tell them to work harder.
You can't just be like squeezingthe blood out of the turnip.
You can't just like, come on, let's go do it.
It's not just rah rah. You actually have to demonstrate
your own vulnerability. You have to admit what you don't
know. You have to identify your own
(22:16):
assumptions as such and you haveto find new ways of holding them
accountable, hold people accountable just to the tasks
that they're doing and then the outcomes.
You actually have to have a way to measure the progress towards
the outcomes and we help with that as well.
But it's again, it's difficult. It's a new world and I think a
(22:37):
lot of the schools in the and this is MBA primarily are still
teaching these old ways that we don't have a lot of people that
are naturally adept at this. Though I think that younger
people I think are just sort of more naturally entrepreneurial.
I do think that some of this comes to them a little bit
(22:57):
easier. You mentioned multiple times.
Now this takes time. It's like it's not a short Rd.
It takes time. It's hard to do if you look at a
transformational process overall, so not just the.
The little bit of like, hey, we're like engaging, you know,
like an initiative and it's out there.
But really, if you're thinking about an incumbent organization
(23:17):
truly moving the needle, moving from where they are today to
become a rat organization as youlike to call it, how much time
do you think that takes or is your experience 55 plus years?
Right. But it drives impact a lot
faster than that. And so I think that that's
actually the thing to hang on because the old school way of
(23:40):
innovating, you could still onlyget your ROI 5-10 years down the
road if at all. And and you would get no
progress towards that impact. It would be all, sort of all or
none. And what you can find here is
that you can start easy, you have to start small, but you can
start driving impact really fromthe very beginning from the very
(24:02):
getgo and change the company in a positive way.
And it takes a brave organization to do that.
But there are all sorts of business issues inside the
company, not even customer facing stuff yet, Just the way
groups are getting along the way, leaderships are getting
along the siloed natures, the old IT or old HR practices or
(24:26):
old financial practices. There's all of these
inefficiencies and these bottlenecks inside the
organization and you could startworking on those challenges at
any point and you could see an impact, a major impact within a
year. But again, it takes the
visionary leader to be able to see that that's actually gonna
not only prove that you have thepeople to do it, but also that
(24:49):
it's going to improve these outcomes.
How do you deal with an organization where you feel like
the leader isn't bought in? I don't know.
I I. That one's tough.
I mean, I there are still grassroots ways of getting
going, but you're doing it in a way in order to change that
leader's mind. Ultimately, you can only get so
(25:10):
far if you can't change the leader's mind.
But if you, if you're in a largeorganization, there are a lot of
people that are thinking about it like you are and do you need
to form a community with others that think the same way?
And you'll find that they actually include some leaders
into this innovation of community or transformation.
Community needs to find places where they can practice their
(25:34):
craft, where they can run experiments that will drive
impact. And then the moment you drive a
little bit of impact, you can start shining a light on the way
it works and then that might getmore positive attention.
So there are ways of doing it kind of bottoms up from the
grassroots level, but ultimatelyif the leadership doesn't buy
then it can only go so far. I'd be curious to hear your
(25:56):
perspective. In the book you talk quite a bit
about diversity. And diversity of thought and
like diverse teams etc. Clearly it's, you know, it's a
topic du jour, like everybody talks about it, but I think in
many cases it's very lip servicey.
I'd be curious to hear like, youknow, what's your perspective on
this and why do you think it's so crucial that you actually
spent quite a bit of time in thebook talking about it?
(26:18):
Yeah, well, I think that it's well known, or at least it's
been established pretty persuasively, that a diversity
of thinking solves complexity better than a lack of diversity.
It seems rather obvious. I mean, if you've got 10 very
like minded people trying to solve a complex problem, you're
(26:41):
actually looking at it from a very limited number of angles.
So forgetting about what we evenmean by forget about the skin
color and sort of all of these other ways of looking at
diversity. Thinking about diversity in
terms of the way people approachproblems, which is influenced by
their background, where they come from, culture, education,
(27:03):
their experiences, all of these things that allow people to come
to a problem from a different perspective, they all share,
even in a diverse environment. They share the same need but not
the same the way the same need is going to be addressed, which
is an important distinction. So if you just think about
(27:25):
diversity in this way, you need to not only have products that
solve for needs, address needs in a diverse way that expands
your market, but also just getting people to tackle how to
address a need or whatever sort of the problem solving space.
If it's a complex problem which is really brought on by a
(27:48):
complex market, then diversity just fundamentally will solve
the problem better. There's been like a famous study
that showed that you know, physicists called in chemists to
solve a physics problem because they just needed smart people
that had this diversity of thinking.
I think in a we live in a more complex world.
(28:09):
Again, the global interconnectedness, the the sort
of the level of niche markets, people are able to demand
different products, different features, different ways that
they're going to be delivered, different prices, different
business models. It's the where we are in the
industrial revolution. If you think about the the sort
of the polar sides that Model T car that represented sort of the
(28:31):
beginning of the real industrialage, you have any car you want
Model T and you want as long as it was black.
And then if you think about on the other end of the spectrum,
digital fabrication where peoplecould print whatever it is that
they want on demand. Think of a pair of sneakers and
the and and whatever choices that you want and colors and
styles and and materials, you can do it like really literally
(28:54):
right at the moment you want it.That's this polar opposite.
We went from a very simple worldin that regard to a very complex
world. Diversity helps you inside that
complex world. Now, it just so happens that
skin color, where you're born, culture, economic background is
(29:17):
a proxy for diversity. I I think that it's completely
reasonable to me that when I look around a room, I want to
see the diversity because I believe that that will represent
the type of diverse thinking that I need in order to better
serve my mission. It isn't charity.
(29:41):
And part of the problem is that people that are sort of fight
against this are all about meritocracy.
But The thing is that meritocracy is not the only
thing that you want in deciding who's going to work on stuff.
Meritocracy is like a minimum viable product, right?
Meritocracy is a line, It's not a continuum.
(30:04):
So if somebody actually scores something on a test, 640, and
that line has been determined that person can adequately do
the job that we want done, then somebody that is 740 isn't
actually more qualified for thatjob than somebody has 640.
They're equally qualified because it's a it's a line, it's
(30:27):
not a threat, it's it's a threshold, not a continuum.
And so people get hung up on what what about the 7:40?
It's like, no, I want somebody at 6:40 and then I want these
other qualities that bring me the diversity.
I like that. So the the way that the people
that are anti this, they are, they don't understand that
they're defining what is needed based upon one variable that
(30:51):
they like and then they define how that variable should be used
and it's like no, that's yes, that's not the way it works.
I love that. I Brent, this is an incredible
conversation. I absolutely love where we're
going with this and and the diversity of of your thought
here. I want to add one more diverse
layer to it before we wrap, which is you mentioned in the
(31:12):
very beginning and I mentioned this very briefly also in my
intro. You have an extensive background
in the startup world. And when we talked about the
disruptive impact of AI at the very beginning, you also
mentioned you know maybe startups that the opportunity
for startups to really be industry defining might be gone
and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on.
(31:33):
What do you think? Is the role of the large
enterprise and the startup in like, is this like a rivalry?
Is it a symbiotic relationship? And if it's a symbiotic
relationship, how do you think enterprises can best engage with
the other side of the coin, which is the startup community?
Yeah, it's a good question. So I am, I am pro antitrust.
(31:59):
I think that we've really let markets consolidate in a
dangerous way that actually reflects in lower wages and
lower quality products and a lack of innovation and all of
these things. We shouldn't have let all of
these companies consolidate markets.
I also it it bothers me a littlebit if part of the reason why
(32:22):
there's no Ipo's and maybe that there's no disruption in some
areas. I still think that there's a
possibility of disruption especially in healthcare, in
life sciences, but because there's still invention going on
there. And and so I think that that all
of the acquisitions that we allow is a way for corporates to
actually squelch new technology which I is used to be antitrust
(32:44):
that used to be illegal and hopefully will become illegal
again. We need to open up this so that
those new technologies see the light of day and then actually
can improve people's lives again.
That's really what the the promise of capitalism is in my
opinion. I think that just sort of
blindly allowing all of this consolidation and acquisition is
(33:05):
wrong and it's hurtful. That being said, there are large
enterprises that can benefit like they own distribution or
they own this other capabilitiesthat it's very difficult for a
startup to achieve. And in that way, large
(33:27):
corporations acquiring companiesthat fit into their existing
distribution models is perhaps okay partnering with those
companies. So there's the example in the
book of three com that partneredwith a startup in order to bring
new solar technology to market. And that was relying somewhat on
the IP of the of the startup andIT.
(33:51):
But also I P that 3M engineers had developed.
And so to me that seems like a cool partnership.
I think venture capitaling, large companies, investing in
startups is a good idea. And there's a lot of ways for
the big established companies towork with the startup world.
I don't think large companies who are not in the IP game.
(34:12):
In other words, they're not inventing new technology.
Those people, those companies are different.
They need to continue to invent.But if you're not an invention
company, then you can't do breakthrough innovation.
You can't do it. And so establishing a lab or all
of these playgrounds for people to pretend that they're going to
reinvent a new business model orsomething, it's just they can
(34:35):
play with the business model campus as long as they want and
they're never going to do breakthrough innovation.
They really aren't. And yet so if those companies
actually are involved in tech scouting and startup scouting
and investing in startups and being actively participants in
the greater innovation economy, hosting events, sponsoring
(34:57):
events, and they start finding the startups that have figured
stuff out, that would be a benefit to the market that the
large company is in. That seems like a way to do long
term, quote UN quote, innovation.
Because the market is out there establishing thousands of
(35:19):
startups that are giving a thousands of different
experiments and a try. That's where success is going to
come from, not the five that's in the corporate innovation lab.
The responsibility of that innovation people that are
inside of these corporates is actually to be involved in the
startup community and that it could include investment, it
could include future acquisitionand then that just seems like
(35:43):
such a logical and rational way of of doing it.
I just think that that's the wayit should work.
Absolutely phenomenal conversation.
I love those last comments on. Really thinking through, how do
you actually engage as a enterprise, a larger enterprise
with the with the startup community really thought
provoking and provocative. As a last question I have for
(36:05):
you, of course we will put the link to your book and your
website into the show notes. But just generally speaking, if
people are curious about brand Cooper, the work you're doing,
the information you're putting out there, where can they find
you? What is a good place for them to
start? Well, I mean, if any of the
services that we talked about are of interest or you might
(36:25):
know of companies that might be interested, we can pass on a
referral fee for that. But you can go check out Moves
theneedle.com. I'm at brantcooper.com.
I'm all over LinkedIn, so I encourage you to reach out and
connect with me. And if you want, you can send me
an e-mail at brant@brantcooper.com.
But I'm doing, you know, regularlive events and regular
(36:46):
discussions on LinkedIn. If people have want to challenge
me or want to discuss any of this, I'm really happy to be
engaged with anybody from your audience.
Wonderful, Brent, this was a phenomenal conversation.
Once again, thank you so much for making the time.
I do hope you get out there and surf a little bit.
It is a sweltering 100 Fahrenheit here in landlocked
(37:09):
Colorado. So I sometimes very much wish I
get back to the beach I had whenI lived in California.
But for us, the escape is the mountain.
So thank you so much. Was really, really phenomenal.
Yeah. Good talking to you, Pascal.
Thanks so much. Hey, it's Pascal.
Thanks for tuning in on this episode of Disrupt Disruption.
If you want more, check out the other episodes we have on this
(37:30):
podcast. And if you liked it, do us a
favor. Go on your podcasting platform
of choice, iTunes, Google Play, whatever it is, and leave a
quick review. It helps tremendously with
getting the insights from our guests out into the world.
If you have any questions, send me an e-mail.
You can reach me at pascal@vnet.com.
Thank you so much for listening and I will hear you here soon.
Welcome to Disrupt Disruption, aseries of intimate interviews
with global thought leaders and practitioners operating at the
intersection of business, leadership and technology.
We're discussing all things innovation and disruption and
how to not only survive, but thrive in these times of
exponentially accelerating change.
Trusted by CE O's founders and leaders globally for the latest
(00:23):
take on business models, methods, culture, and
leadership, we cut to the chase,debunk the hype, and get real.
You're in great company. I'm your host, Pascal Finnette,
cofounder of B Radical. Hey everybody, Pascal, here we
are back with another episode ofDisrupt Disruption, and today
(00:45):
I'm blessed to have Brent Cooperhere.
Brent is an incredible human being as a New York Times
bestselling author of a book called The Lean Entrepreneur
recently wrote a new book as a follow up called Disruption
Proof, Empower People, Create Value, Drive, Change.
As you can imagine, that fits unbelievably well to what we
(01:07):
typically talk about here in thepodcast, so we'll dig deep into
this book. He's also the CEO and founder of
Moves the Needle, has a long career in the startup and large
enterprise world behind him, andis also an avid surfer.
If you read the book, you will know what I mean.
With that being said, Brent, I'mexcited to have you on this
(01:28):
podcast. Thanks for being here.
Thank you Pascal. Happy to be here.
So Brent, I have to ask, I love the book.
I love the fact that you're taking a different perspective
on this whole topic of disruption.
If you wouldn't mind telling us and the listeners a little bit,
where do you come from when it comes to innovation and
(01:49):
disruption? What's your your starting point,
Your base? To be honest, I think my
starting point is the same as everybody's starting point,
which is usually, you know, Clayton Christensen's analysis
of the tech industry in the really in the 80s and 90s and
maybe the 2000s, maybe going back before that, I don't know.
(02:10):
And sort of his concepts around the innovator's dilemma and and
this pattern that he saw where industries are completely
disrupted by new companies. So that's where I began and I
think that, you know, I come from the startup world.
And so we were always the ones that were trying to disrupt
(02:31):
whole industries if we could do to really change the world.
I mean, we really believe that'swhat we were set out to do.
And there are certain periods inhistory where new things come
along. And at that time it was the
Internet and all of the technologies that were evolving
very rapidly in the broad understanding of the Internet.
(02:52):
And there was this opportunity to redo whole industries and the
first startup I was in was called Tumbleweed.
Basically we had technology to send emails or documents
securely over the Internet and we thought we could replace
(03:13):
overnight packages and and thosetype of things, as long as they
were documents like the way law firms communicated, it was an
exciting time. I think that those opportunities
now are far and few between. I don't think it's the same as
it was then disruptive innovation time.
I think we're in a different time now.
So curious to hear. If you wouldn't mind.
(03:34):
I would love to stay in this particular piece a little longer
because I find it striking that you say this when seemingly at
least the whole world tells you,Oh my God, AI is changing.
Everything is the biggest, you know, the biggest disruption
we've seen since the invention of the the microprocessor and
the personal computer. So sounds like you have a little
(03:55):
bit of a different perspective here.
Well, I think that there are still emerging technologies that
have that can be disruptive to society and they could be
disruptive to how businesses are.
Accomplishing their mission, butthere's no really one firm that
(04:17):
is that is taking over a completely existing market in a
I, right. So it's a disruptive technology,
but it doesn't meet any of the criteria of the way Dr.
Christensen would have defined disruptive innovation.
And I think it would be you'd behard pressed to think of
(04:38):
actually the last industry. That went through classic
disruptive innovation. I I just don't think it happens
anymore. We're not going through that
cycle of tech. And in the end, I think that if
you look back, he was probably only describing a small portion
of the economy and it wasn't necessarily something that
(04:59):
prevailed in all businesses or all industries.
And there's quite a few people out there now that have done
sort of the research and say, yeah, you know, listen, the
likelihood. Even with emerging technology,
the likelihood of a startup completely disrupting a new
market, it's like really teeny. And yet all of the innovation
groups of these large companies continue to waltz around with
(05:21):
their innovators dilemma, you know, in their backpack and talk
about breakthrough innovation. All of these concepts are
anachronistic in this day and age, to be honest, if I think
innovators need to be thinking about their contributions
differently. Not in a lab trying to come up
with breakthrough innovation. Not only are they not going to
be able to do it, it's impossible to do it that way.
(05:44):
But also I don't think that theyneed to.
So with that refreshing perspective and I love it as a
base, if you are the CEO, the Chief Innovation Officer,
whatever C-Suite title or VP title you have at a large
corporation, what are you going to do?
Well, what do we what do we makeout of this?
(06:06):
It's. To be honest, it's like any
technology adoption. So not long after college I was
I sort of became the computer guy.
We didn't even call it it yet because I was the one that
studied computer programming in college and was familiar with
computers. And you would go into these
young small businesses, medium sized businesses that were just
(06:30):
adopting. Laptops or desktop computers or
electronic e-mail and networkingtechnologies, we're just sort of
emerging and kitchen holding these businesses well.
So all of those CEO's are doing sort of a very similar ROI
calculation in the that moment. So this is the 90s and they're
saying listen, if we go and buy all of our principals, these
(06:51):
2000 or $3000 laptops, what is the return on investment we're
going to get? Well, we can.
We can fire one. Personal admin that like a group
of four partners have 4 admins and we can get rid of two of
them or something like that. So they're doing an ROI
calculation, which of course is also eliminating jobs, which is
(07:15):
also the big fear of Ari. It's gonna eliminate all these
jobs, but what you're actually trying to do is use the
technology to make those principles more efficient.
And so that they're actually able to generate more revenue
themselves at a lower cost and faster than they were before.
But I tell you even in those, inthose days, those early 90s
(07:36):
days, it was tough ROI calculation.
These businesses were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
every year or every two years, because the technology life
cycle was so short, because the software would be too.
Powerful. That would slow the computers
down and the chips would have just doubled in speed.
And so you have to like, upgradeall of your computers.
(07:56):
And it was this whole game of upgrading to try to chase this
ROI. And so again, it's not, it's not
really that different. AI has a different potential and
it's less well understood and its application is less well
understood. It touches more people.
And so I think that there's somescary elements in there to
(08:19):
people, but at its very base, it's still the same sort of
thing. And this is the way executives
should be approaching it. How might we apply a I in order
to achieve our mission more efficiently?
Not just reduce cost, but achieve our mission more
efficiently? And then as a boss, we should be
saying, how can we use a I to automate the more mundane tasks
(08:43):
that I do or my people do? And then how do I up level the
skills of my people so that theyare actually driving a big
impact. So the growth mindset is how do
I leverage AI to reduce the redundancy and reduce the
mundane, which is what AI is very good at.
How do I actually draw out the creativity and the intelligence
(09:06):
and these other things out of myemployees so that they are
actually having a greater effecton the impact in the business?
And so then if you if you're successful at that, you end up
creating more jobs than you're shedding.
And that's actually what should be the promise of AI is that if
used correctly, we're actually going to have this growth
(09:27):
mindset and we're going to figure out new things and we're
going to be creating more jobs than the ones that we're
shedding. And that is a good outcome for
technology. And to be honest, it's always
been that. And so I think AI there's sort
of a. The fear is a little bit
overblown and I think it's because it's.
(09:48):
Suddenly all of these white collar people are fearing for
their jobs and it's way overstated because A I does the
creativity and the intelligence and all of that stuff actually
very poorly. What it does very well is
looking at large language modelsand copying what's already out
there. A I The large language models
(10:09):
that are built on the Internet reinforce.
Mediocrity and conventional wisdom.
And so if you are above mediocrity and you have some
ideas that go, and that's what people should be thinking about
is, Oh no, I'm going to lose my job.
Well, you're only going to lose your job as if you have none of
your own creativity and intelligence to bring to the
(10:30):
job, right? Curious to talk about this in
the context of disruption and you very astutely titled your
book Disruption Proof. Can you walk us through a little
bit and you've got frameworks inyour book of course.
And can you walk us a little bitthrough as the as an executive,
as a founder, how do I prove myself for disruption?
(10:54):
How do I actually go about this?Right.
So it's important that to understand that in this context,
I'm not talking about disruptionas being just brought by
technology. Technology is certainly a part
of it. But again, it's not, oh, I'm
scared to start up. It's gonna take my business.
It's. It could be anybody that's
(11:15):
actually going to take my business.
So if I don't move on this new technology, other people might
go after my customers because I'm being left behind.
OK, so that's that's true. Technology can disrupt that way.
But it's also things like the pandemic, it's supply chain
being blocked or or remember, even before the pandemic, the
(11:35):
ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal and so suddenly
everybody's non redundant supplychains got affected, right?
And it could be inflation, it could be the big quit, it could
be any economic changes. So these things have always
happened. They just happen in isolation.
Pandemics have happened before. But it's this globally connected
(11:57):
world that we're living in because of the digital age.
And it's the speed of information and the speed of
disinformation. All of these things mean that
those those disruptive things. That used to be isolated now
ripple across all of our economies and all of our
businesses, right. So something that literally does
(12:18):
happen, the Butterfly and the Amazon, actually, it's affecting
us. And so that's sort of this new
paradigm that executives have tobe thinking of is that, no,
we're not done. We didn't make it through the
pandemic and now we can go back to the way it was before.
We actually have to prepare our organizations for the next
disruption. Maybe it's going to be a
(12:38):
ransomware attack. That actually hit a hospital
here in San Diego during the pandemic and I just was talking
to a a rural healthcare provideryesterday and a local hospital
system there is being shut down because of a ransomware attack.
They just couldn't afford to to get beyond that attack.
(12:58):
And so again, that's another type of disruption.
So how do I create organizationsthat can thrive and survive
these ongoing disruptions? And that's sort of the big
question. And and there's a number of
things that executives can do orshould start doing that can
start preparing those organizations to be able to be
(13:20):
aware of those disruptions that are coming to be able to respond
and change what you're doing based upon those things coming
and have the strength to be ableto to withstand those.
And that's really where the acronym RAD comes from, the
RESILIENT. You're aware, and they're
dynamic. They have this strength of their
(13:43):
founding or their DNA or their intellectual property or
something that is core to them that is like, you know, the
roots of a palm tree that go deep into the shoreline.
Yet they're also aware of the storms coming and they can
dynamically change. They can blow in the wind
without collapsing. When these changes do come, you
(14:04):
can't prevent the changes. They're coming.
So how do we prepare for them? That's an organization.
I'd be curious to talk a little bit more about the dynamic part
of this, because at least in my practice, a lot of organizations
seem to really conceptually understand it without a doubt.
I mean, there's the Agile movement, everybody talks about
agility and adaptability, and yet it seems to be incredibly
(14:26):
hard for organizations to actually pull off.
I'd be curious to hear from yourexperience as you're writing
also in the book, about how do you do this as an organization.
Yeah, it is very difficult and Ithink that Agile is one example
of a good way to go. I think that the problem often
is that people are more focused on the processes of Agile as
(14:49):
opposed to the behavior that's needed to be.
Agile And so I think that there's these large top down
implementations, process heavy implementations of Agile that
completely forego the principlesthat were first outlined in the
Agile Manifesto. And I think the Agile Manifesto
(15:11):
should be like right there in your hip pocket no matter what
you're implementing, because youwant to get back to what those
core principles are. And that has a lot to do with.
Empowering teams to be able to do their own work in service to
what the mission of that team is.
And that's still very difficult for leadership to do and to
understand. And to be honest, employees
(15:35):
don't even know how to act in anempowered fashion.
So there's a part of the book where the leader is saying, you
know, how come I can't just say go be agile and my employees go
be agile, right. And as opposed to wait a second,
you actually have to teach the skills.
You actually have to work with them so that they understand
what it means to be empowered. You actually hold them
(15:56):
accountable in different ways. You can't have empowerment
without accountability, and it requires this change behavior
not only of all of the team members, but also of the middle
managers and of the senior managers.
And those changes, you don't getthose from reading a book and
you don't get those from being told how to do.
You actually have to practice the behavior.
(16:19):
And when we're engaged in a large way with a large
organization, we'll spend 90 days with five teams of 10
people and different layers of management.
And we'll have that group practice that new behavior for
90 days. And after the 90 days, we might
have to hang around a little bitto help them, but they can start
acting in that way. And now you've got this
(16:42):
beachhead inside of your companythat is agile and then you have
to start working from there. How do you?
Begin to proselytize other partsof the organization to work in
the same way. It's a long journey.
It's a long journey and it's difficult.
But I think that the alternativeis just as you said, you're not
(17:03):
prepared and you have all of these disruptions that come in
and you're going to turn over your C-Suite every five years.
And you're going to go acquire companies and you're going to
divest these companies and you're going to do reorg after
reorg. And I think that that's a slow
sync to ultimately failing completely.
In this context, where do you typically when you engage with
(17:26):
an organization, where do you typically have them start?
Like what's the starting point for that journey for you?
Yeah. It kind of depends on who's
bringing this in. In the last case with the
medical device company, it was their digital.
Group and they had already bought into the digital
transformation. They have all this opportunity
digitizing their products in ways IoT eventually a I and they
(17:51):
have no shortage of ideas. This is why everybody that does
idea challenges, it's a waste oftime.
There's no shortage of ideas. It's really how do you generate
the evidence that these ideas are any good.
And then that's what we're we'reteaching them.
So we go in there, they've got these ideas.
We've got five teams. You know, the teams are
essentially the two pizza sized teams, 5 to 10 people, and we're
(18:13):
teaching them how to go out and talk to customers, how to run
experiments to bust through yourassumptions, how to use evidence
to help make your decisions. How do you share that
information with leaders? How do leaders respond to people
that are working in this exploration style of working?
And then how do you balance the execution and the exploration?
It's like once you've learned something.
(18:35):
You don't continue to explore, you actually have to start
executing. Everything has to be this
balance between exploration and execution and that's what we're
we're teaching those. We have very handson intensive
coaching that we're doing over 90 days.
So interesting, curious to hear.And this goes of course for
(18:57):
everybody who reads the book. You've got this beautiful
illiteration of five E's which speak to exactly what you just
what you just described. I'd be curious to hear kind of
like the anti pattern like the when you when you see this not
working. Like have you seen any patterns
where it's like this is where I feel companies trip over their
(19:19):
own 2 feet on a regular basis? Well, yeah, I think to be
honest, this isn't for everybody.
So there you do find there are people inside the organization
that just cannot or will not don't want to work this way.
And that's fine. I think that there are places in
the organization for those people to be.
(19:41):
And so it's good for you to sortof learn.
We typically have rates of over 90% of these employees that
never want to go back to the waythey were working before because
it's exercising their creativityand their intelligence in ways
that they weren't before. They get to be solving problems.
They feel like they're driving impact, not only for their.
(20:04):
Team and their group, but also for the whole company and but
becomes powerful. And I think it's important to
note that in this age of burnoutand the big quit and all of
these things where people are frustrated with their work and
all sorts of studies that say that employees wanna feel in
line, they wanna work for it with the ethical companies.
They want their companies to be more sustainable and more
(20:26):
diverse. I mean, the people want this and
if you start empowering them to work in these new ways, those
are the people that you're goingto be able to keep and that
you're going to want to keep. I think that the tripping point
tends to be leaders who don't really understand this concept
of empowering but also hope holding accountable.
(20:47):
And sometimes they step away toofar and you have to kind of
teach them to come back in and ask the right questions.
Or other times there's a cultureof there's such a culture of
respect that that there's no what Brené Brown would call
respectful run rumbling. There's no, there's no sort of
open, direct dialogue about whatshould be done or what's wrong.
(21:11):
Or you can't, like, critique another person's ideas because
that's disrespectful or something, as opposed to
learning how to do that in a respectful way.
You can't just let everything slide.
There are these cultural elements that sort of have to be
worked through that are often difficult to overcome.
But primarily, I think that middle management doesn't get
(21:35):
much investment inside of these large organizations and they
don't get the training that theyneed.
And they probably were never trained to begin with.
They moved up somebody from a team member to a manager and
they didn't get any training. And these people are great at
the technical abilities that they have, but maybe not great
managers. I do think you just have to
invest time in developing the skills of these people.
(21:56):
Because when people are working in this uncertainty mode, you
can't just tell them to work harder.
You can't just be like squeezingthe blood out of the turnip.
You can't just like, come on, let's go do it.
It's not just rah rah. You actually have to demonstrate
your own vulnerability. You have to admit what you don't
know. You have to identify your own
(22:16):
assumptions as such and you haveto find new ways of holding them
accountable, hold people accountable just to the tasks
that they're doing and then the outcomes.
You actually have to have a way to measure the progress towards
the outcomes and we help with that as well.
But it's again, it's difficult. It's a new world and I think a
(22:37):
lot of the schools in the and this is MBA primarily are still
teaching these old ways that we don't have a lot of people that
are naturally adept at this. Though I think that younger
people I think are just sort of more naturally entrepreneurial.
I do think that some of this comes to them a little bit
(22:57):
easier. You mentioned multiple times.
Now this takes time. It's like it's not a short Rd.
It takes time. It's hard to do if you look at a
transformational process overall, so not just the.
The little bit of like, hey, we're like engaging, you know,
like an initiative and it's out there.
But really, if you're thinking about an incumbent organization
(23:17):
truly moving the needle, moving from where they are today to
become a rat organization as youlike to call it, how much time
do you think that takes or is your experience 55 plus years?
Right. But it drives impact a lot
faster than that. And so I think that that's
actually the thing to hang on because the old school way of
(23:40):
innovating, you could still onlyget your ROI 5-10 years down the
road if at all. And and you would get no
progress towards that impact. It would be all, sort of all or
none. And what you can find here is
that you can start easy, you have to start small, but you can
start driving impact really fromthe very beginning from the very
(24:02):
getgo and change the company in a positive way.
And it takes a brave organization to do that.
But there are all sorts of business issues inside the
company, not even customer facing stuff yet, Just the way
groups are getting along the way, leaderships are getting
along the siloed natures, the old IT or old HR practices or
(24:26):
old financial practices. There's all of these
inefficiencies and these bottlenecks inside the
organization and you could startworking on those challenges at
any point and you could see an impact, a major impact within a
year. But again, it takes the
visionary leader to be able to see that that's actually gonna
not only prove that you have thepeople to do it, but also that
(24:49):
it's going to improve these outcomes.
How do you deal with an organization where you feel like
the leader isn't bought in? I don't know.
I I. That one's tough.
I mean, I there are still grassroots ways of getting
going, but you're doing it in a way in order to change that
leader's mind. Ultimately, you can only get so
(25:10):
far if you can't change the leader's mind.
But if you, if you're in a largeorganization, there are a lot of
people that are thinking about it like you are and do you need
to form a community with others that think the same way?
And you'll find that they actually include some leaders
into this innovation of community or transformation.
Community needs to find places where they can practice their
(25:34):
craft, where they can run experiments that will drive
impact. And then the moment you drive a
little bit of impact, you can start shining a light on the way
it works and then that might getmore positive attention.
So there are ways of doing it kind of bottoms up from the
grassroots level, but ultimatelyif the leadership doesn't buy
then it can only go so far. I'd be curious to hear your
(25:56):
perspective. In the book you talk quite a bit
about diversity. And diversity of thought and
like diverse teams etc. Clearly it's, you know, it's a
topic du jour, like everybody talks about it, but I think in
many cases it's very lip servicey.
I'd be curious to hear like, youknow, what's your perspective on
this and why do you think it's so crucial that you actually
spent quite a bit of time in thebook talking about it?
(26:18):
Yeah, well, I think that it's well known, or at least it's
been established pretty persuasively, that a diversity
of thinking solves complexity better than a lack of diversity.
It seems rather obvious. I mean, if you've got 10 very
like minded people trying to solve a complex problem, you're
(26:41):
actually looking at it from a very limited number of angles.
So forgetting about what we evenmean by forget about the skin
color and sort of all of these other ways of looking at
diversity. Thinking about diversity in
terms of the way people approachproblems, which is influenced by
their background, where they come from, culture, education,
(27:03):
their experiences, all of these things that allow people to come
to a problem from a different perspective, they all share,
even in a diverse environment. They share the same need but not
the same the way the same need is going to be addressed, which
is an important distinction. So if you just think about
(27:25):
diversity in this way, you need to not only have products that
solve for needs, address needs in a diverse way that expands
your market, but also just getting people to tackle how to
address a need or whatever sort of the problem solving space.
If it's a complex problem which is really brought on by a
(27:48):
complex market, then diversity just fundamentally will solve
the problem better. There's been like a famous study
that showed that you know, physicists called in chemists to
solve a physics problem because they just needed smart people
that had this diversity of thinking.
I think in a we live in a more complex world.
(28:09):
Again, the global interconnectedness, the the sort
of the level of niche markets, people are able to demand
different products, different features, different ways that
they're going to be delivered, different prices, different
business models. It's the where we are in the
industrial revolution. If you think about the the sort
of the polar sides that Model T car that represented sort of the
(28:31):
beginning of the real industrialage, you have any car you want
Model T and you want as long as it was black.
And then if you think about on the other end of the spectrum,
digital fabrication where peoplecould print whatever it is that
they want on demand. Think of a pair of sneakers and
the and and whatever choices that you want and colors and
styles and and materials, you can do it like really literally
(28:54):
right at the moment you want it.That's this polar opposite.
We went from a very simple worldin that regard to a very complex
world. Diversity helps you inside that
complex world. Now, it just so happens that
skin color, where you're born, culture, economic background is
(29:17):
a proxy for diversity. I I think that it's completely
reasonable to me that when I look around a room, I want to
see the diversity because I believe that that will represent
the type of diverse thinking that I need in order to better
serve my mission. It isn't charity.
(29:41):
And part of the problem is that people that are sort of fight
against this are all about meritocracy.
But The thing is that meritocracy is not the only
thing that you want in deciding who's going to work on stuff.
Meritocracy is like a minimum viable product, right?
Meritocracy is a line, It's not a continuum.
(30:04):
So if somebody actually scores something on a test, 640, and
that line has been determined that person can adequately do
the job that we want done, then somebody that is 740 isn't
actually more qualified for thatjob than somebody has 640.
They're equally qualified because it's a it's a line, it's
(30:27):
not a threat, it's it's a threshold, not a continuum.
And so people get hung up on what what about the 7:40?
It's like, no, I want somebody at 6:40 and then I want these
other qualities that bring me the diversity.
I like that. So the the way that the people
that are anti this, they are, they don't understand that
they're defining what is needed based upon one variable that
(30:51):
they like and then they define how that variable should be used
and it's like no, that's yes, that's not the way it works.
I love that. I Brent, this is an incredible
conversation. I absolutely love where we're
going with this and and the diversity of of your thought
here. I want to add one more diverse
layer to it before we wrap, which is you mentioned in the
(31:12):
very beginning and I mentioned this very briefly also in my
intro. You have an extensive background
in the startup world. And when we talked about the
disruptive impact of AI at the very beginning, you also
mentioned you know maybe startups that the opportunity
for startups to really be industry defining might be gone
and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on.
(31:33):
What do you think? Is the role of the large
enterprise and the startup in like, is this like a rivalry?
Is it a symbiotic relationship? And if it's a symbiotic
relationship, how do you think enterprises can best engage with
the other side of the coin, which is the startup community?
Yeah, it's a good question. So I am, I am pro antitrust.
(31:59):
I think that we've really let markets consolidate in a
dangerous way that actually reflects in lower wages and
lower quality products and a lack of innovation and all of
these things. We shouldn't have let all of
these companies consolidate markets.
I also it it bothers me a littlebit if part of the reason why
(32:22):
there's no Ipo's and maybe that there's no disruption in some
areas. I still think that there's a
possibility of disruption especially in healthcare, in
life sciences, but because there's still invention going on
there. And and so I think that that all
of the acquisitions that we allow is a way for corporates to
actually squelch new technology which I is used to be antitrust
(32:44):
that used to be illegal and hopefully will become illegal
again. We need to open up this so that
those new technologies see the light of day and then actually
can improve people's lives again.
That's really what the the promise of capitalism is in my
opinion. I think that just sort of
blindly allowing all of this consolidation and acquisition is
(33:05):
wrong and it's hurtful. That being said, there are large
enterprises that can benefit like they own distribution or
they own this other capabilitiesthat it's very difficult for a
startup to achieve. And in that way, large
(33:27):
corporations acquiring companiesthat fit into their existing
distribution models is perhaps okay partnering with those
companies. So there's the example in the
book of three com that partneredwith a startup in order to bring
new solar technology to market. And that was relying somewhat on
the IP of the of the startup andIT.
(33:51):
But also I P that 3M engineers had developed.
And so to me that seems like a cool partnership.
I think venture capitaling, large companies, investing in
startups is a good idea. And there's a lot of ways for
the big established companies towork with the startup world.
I don't think large companies who are not in the IP game.
(34:12):
In other words, they're not inventing new technology.
Those people, those companies are different.
They need to continue to invent.But if you're not an invention
company, then you can't do breakthrough innovation.
You can't do it. And so establishing a lab or all
of these playgrounds for people to pretend that they're going to
reinvent a new business model orsomething, it's just they can
(34:35):
play with the business model campus as long as they want and
they're never going to do breakthrough innovation.
They really aren't. And yet so if those companies
actually are involved in tech scouting and startup scouting
and investing in startups and being actively participants in
the greater innovation economy, hosting events, sponsoring
(34:57):
events, and they start finding the startups that have figured
stuff out, that would be a benefit to the market that the
large company is in. That seems like a way to do long
term, quote UN quote, innovation.
Because the market is out there establishing thousands of
(35:19):
startups that are giving a thousands of different
experiments and a try. That's where success is going to
come from, not the five that's in the corporate innovation lab.
The responsibility of that innovation people that are
inside of these corporates is actually to be involved in the
startup community and that it could include investment, it
could include future acquisitionand then that just seems like
(35:43):
such a logical and rational way of of doing it.
I just think that that's the wayit should work.
Absolutely phenomenal conversation.
I love those last comments on. Really thinking through, how do
you actually engage as a enterprise, a larger enterprise
with the with the startup community really thought
provoking and provocative. As a last question I have for
(36:05):
you, of course we will put the link to your book and your
website into the show notes. But just generally speaking, if
people are curious about brand Cooper, the work you're doing,
the information you're putting out there, where can they find
you? What is a good place for them to
start? Well, I mean, if any of the
services that we talked about are of interest or you might
(36:25):
know of companies that might be interested, we can pass on a
referral fee for that. But you can go check out Moves
theneedle.com. I'm at brantcooper.com.
I'm all over LinkedIn, so I encourage you to reach out and
connect with me. And if you want, you can send me
an e-mail at brant@brantcooper.com.
But I'm doing, you know, regularlive events and regular
(36:46):
discussions on LinkedIn. If people have want to challenge
me or want to discuss any of this, I'm really happy to be
engaged with anybody from your audience.
Wonderful, Brent, this was a phenomenal conversation.
Once again, thank you so much for making the time.
I do hope you get out there and surf a little bit.
It is a sweltering 100 Fahrenheit here in landlocked
(37:09):
Colorado. So I sometimes very much wish I
get back to the beach I had whenI lived in California.
But for us, the escape is the mountain.
So thank you so much. Was really, really phenomenal.
Yeah. Good talking to you, Pascal.
Thanks so much. Hey, it's Pascal.
Thanks for tuning in on this episode of Disrupt Disruption.
If you want more, check out the other episodes we have on this
(37:30):
podcast. And if you liked it, do us a
favor. Go on your podcasting platform
of choice, iTunes, Google Play, whatever it is, and leave a
quick review. It helps tremendously with
getting the insights from our guests out into the world.
If you have any questions, send me an e-mail.
You can reach me at pascal@vnet.com.
Thank you so much for listening and I will hear you here soon.
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