Big thinking + the small experiments that make it real

DISCLAIMER: I’ve been told by a good friend and former colleague to make what I put on LinkedIn more positive, so if you like my normal kinda thing, this might not be for you. You will find a distinctly lesser level of blunt takes on big business innovation in the words below.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about what works really well and we need to see more of (see, positive already!). Who’s doing things well and why? What stood out to me was how many ‘successful’ leaders never really have much of a plan, often working off a big idea you could really summarize on a single piece of paper until they effectively muddle their way through as they go … tacking, pivoting, hacking and sometimes thriving on moments of serendipity and luck.

My first example of this is very cliche, I know, but go look at Elon Musk. A serially successful guy that, usually has a big idea he believe in, but hasn’t figured it all out by any stretch of the imagination, and ends up changing the world. So much of the Tesla story has been big strategic vision, half a plan to make it happen, and the rest falls into place by doing and figuring it out as they go. Meanwhile, in a traditionally auto manufacturer, the thinking is different. It’s either milking the cow to death (Ford: “Build more trucks”) or feeling the need to know all the answers before making a move and risking the legacy.

Many of us have big ideas, but we don’t always share them or push them until we’ve effectively worked it all out. So much of corporate life is like this, creating documents or papers to justify the thinking to the naysayers (or the old white guys waiting for the pension at the top of the house) vs. starting to share it, test it and prove it.

I often come back to the story of Ryanair and how it went from small player to Europe’s biggest airline through the big thinking of Michael O’Leary, coupled with a few bits of dumb luck along the way.

Ryanair revolutionized low cost air travel through a no-frills attitude to the customer (weird now given it’s all about ‘the human experience’), intense utilization of aircraft and aggressive ancillary revenue strategies, but none of this would have been possible without the planes themselves. Legend has it that Ryanair made their order for the best part of 200 737–800s days after 9/11 shocked the airline industry at a bargain basement price just as legacy flag carriers desperately rationalized their fleets. Such an piece of muddling through would never have been possible were it not for that big, bold strategic thought.

So what about the small experiments? Well big thinking is useless unless you do something with it, and these experiments help you tack a course, find the route, screw it up, find something new that you never considered or just didn’t know when you had the big idea.

It’s often said the world is changing faster than ever. I dispute this, many of the things we point to being disruptive (iPhone, data capabilities, Uber etc.) are more than a decade old now, but the world is changing a lot without us really realizing. So those small experiments can be the way to be a pioneer without being the one lying dead on the ground with an arrow sticking through your head (as a good friend likes to point out to me each time I talk about being different), like so many of the people who’ve previously tried to do new things in the corporate environment.

With small experiments that ruffle a few feathers, cause a few unintended consequences or even get attention because they get your customers excited creating a different type of interaction, the biggest injury you’re likely to get is a small flesh wound, a stories of how you got that scar always make a good tale down the pub.

Small experiments help you go against the grain, keep you curious in the pursuit of the big strategic goal or they help you realize you weren’t imaginative enough with the big goal and the end destination can be so much more interesting! And that brings me to my cliched example number two — Amazon. The big strategic idea in those early days was to be a retailing behemoth, something they started with books and grew out from. But it was the AWS experiment that is today by far the dominant driver of the business. A consistent culture of experimentation has taken Bezos’ big idea further than he would have imagined.

Amazon aren’t alone here either. The Nike & Under Armour origin stories both come from experiments and side hustles their founders played with before they took the plunge from their day jobs. Isn’t the same true for a big company?

Now you might point to Expedia or Microsoft as examples of companies running so many experiments, but I’m not talking about the many tests you might be doing to increase conversation on your website (though these are good), but more the business experiments that make a much bigger impact on the story and winning the organization over than any PowerPoint, cross functional meeting or board paper.

What are those previously impossible things that haven’t been done before? What could you not do before due to technology limitations, societal make up, political reasons, regulation or the absence of a big strategic thought, and how might you go play with it, learn, get burned, find a source of customer love and ultimately make the case to keep moving forward, that can never be achieved through the normal corporate tools.

If you’ve made it through that waffle, well done. Here’s a few companies starting to show this kind of big thinking, small experiment life.

KLM / Air France have always been airlines, and over many decades they’ve been rather good at it too. Then this thing called climate change came along, and a Swedish girl called Greta captured the world’s attention with her attitude to travel. Now an international airline is telling people to think before they travel, even booking some passengers onto trains in the case of short routes they will begin to phase out. Imagine if a big part of Air Canada’s future involved trains or a hyperloop out of a Toronto hub instead of a Airbus A220? And how might they experiment with that?

Money and wealth has historically been designed around individuals, mostly because it was easier this way but also society kinda made it like that with men being the family breadwinner. But the world has now changed, imagine if we thought about money and wealth as a family, coming from different sources, shared across generations and banks designed around that. John Hancock might have noticed that, and Twine could be the start as they create savings & investments around couples, not individuals. Imagine if your bank or pension fund designed around your family, rather than got constrained in their business silos and legacy tech architecture and experimented with something new?

And what if for literally decades you’ve been hugely successful running the same retail model out of a big blue warehouse on the edge of the city? Well IKEA is changing fast, those big out of town boxes you go to for meatballs and maybe check out a sofa aren’t going away, but they’re rapidly experimenting with new retail formats, delivery experiences and living collaborations to ensure they can remain relevant as others finally catch up with the advantages they’ve held on price and modern utilitarian design.

Congratulations, you made it to the end of my borderline positive view on the world of innovation. Comments and inquiries to procure my services are always welcome, have a pleasant day.