How I met my innovation mentor!
In this article, I want to tell the story of how I met Greg Bernarda, how Greg became a mentor in my journey to become a business model innovation coach, and one of the “five extraordinary people with extraordinary projects” I’m working with this year.
The story starts one afternoon in late summer 2015 in Sydney. My friend Philippe Coullomb, CEO and co-founder of the boutique consulting company wheretofromhere?, and I were wandering by the water, brainstorming the design of an upcoming 3-day workshop with 40 change agents whose key objective was to enable them to explore a different future for their company. One of my convictions was that we should use the Business Model Canvas to support ideation and prototyping during the 3 days. And that’s when the story took an unexpected turn: “do you know I know Greg Bernarda? said Philippe. Greg is the co-author of the “Value Proposition Design” book, one of my favourite books on innovation, and a global expert in Business Model Innovation. In a spark of genius, Philippe added “why don’t we invite Greg?” and a couple of phone calls plus a quick catch-up with our sponsors later, our 3-day event took a new turn with Greg as an innovation guest star in our team of facilitators.
Greg was absolutely brilliant during those three days, humble and humbling at the same time. As I had expected, he was a fantastic teacher of business model innovation and he was able to guide participants in their discovery of the canvas and the methodology. What I didn’t realise at the time was that he also is an expert designer and strategic thinker. His empathy skills blew my mind, empathy for the client in the room and the end customers of the services they provide. He was also able to challenge the participants with strategic questions and share strategic insights on the fly throughout the workshop. And he was such a master storyteller using the canvas, creating a long-lasting impact on participants through these stories and inspiring them with a sense of greater possibility.
The innovation workshop was a big success. Greg’s mission was accomplished and he went back to his other priorities, whether it is to steward the emergence of the leadership required for a more sustainable future (he’s the co-founder of the Programme Noé in France) or invent new ways to prototype solutions to systemic issues (he’s the co-founder of Lift:Lab in Switzerland).
For me, after witnessing business model innovation in action and Greg’s mastery in this 3-day workshop I felt eager to learn more. From that point onwards, I incorporated business model innovation into my consulting practice in a systematic way, and over the following two years I seized all available opportunities to work on business model innovation.
In September 2016, I joined other business model innovation practitioners in the bootcamp organised by Alex Osterwalder in Switzerland, and Greg, one of only a handful certified coaches, became my official mentor in the arduous journey to become a Strategyzer certified innovation coach.
Then in late 2016 Greg invited me to work with him on creating stories and innovation case studies to be used as inspiration and reflexion moments for innovation teams involved in an accelerator programme he was facilitating in China. And I accepted the contract.
As a seasoned consultant and a non-prolific writer on business transformation and sustainable living it was not the first time I had a one-on-one with a blank sheet of paper, but this time the paper was not entirely blank: it had lines and boxes, the 9 boxes of the business model canvas to be precise, and writing a powerful story around the business model canvas was entirely new for me. I had seen Greg present those crisp, enlightening stories on companies you thought you knew and that you would suddenly rediscover with a completely new perspective with the canvas.
I remember my initial reaction when Greg told me that building such a story took usually 4–5 full days of works spread across several weeks. “5 days, sure…”, I thought, “I’ll be much quicker than that!”. The truth is it took me way more than 5 full days to finish my first story. While coming up with a first draft was quick, that initial draft totally lacked impact and I really struggled to find the perspective that would make the story telling powerful. It took a lot of humility, serious research, patience, countless iterations and regular feedback from Greg to finally find the right angle.
But as with many other things, the first time is the hardest as you must give up on all false assumptions and expectations. But now the hard part is behind me. The presentation of the two innovation case studies I had created was a big success and thanks to Greg I had a new trick in my bag with business model story telling.
After that experience, when Greg told me of a business idea around story telling that had been lingering in his mind for quite a while I was instantly hooked. My background is in complex project delivery and I like to use that skillset to help a few of the extraordinary people I meet deliver on their most ambitious ideas, just like the one Greg had just shared with me.
Things took time to mature, as our agendas often rule our busy lives, but when Greg sent a proposal on a 5-week programme to go from an idea to the first tests of a business model during the Swiss summer time wheels were suddenly in motion. A few weeks later I joined a team of his close collaborators and several IMD MBA students with an entrepreneurial spirit in Lausanne to get to work on this idea. Code name: 21st century business models.
In my consulting work I have spent many days using the business model innovation toolkit to help clients on their innovation efforts but it was the first time I was applying the tools and framework we use with our clients on one of our own ideas. I found the experience so fascinating that I want to write a full blog post on this alone, detailing how it enabled me to get deeper insights on potential pitfalls of the innovation process, on the paradoxes aspiring entrepreneurs have to constantly deal with (e.g. moving fast and going deep), and finally on the importance of critical thinking when dealing with customer feedback.
When I reflect on Greg’s mentoring in my own journey to become a business model innovation coach — creating a safe environment for me to learn, providing feedback, always challenging me to go further, dig deeper, use critical thinking and razor-sharp language, being fully himself and open to reciprocity, and above all making learning fun — I realise how lucky I have been that our paths crossed.
They’ll cross again in Melbourne in October for the first ever Strategyzer business model innovation masterclass in Australia. This one came from my realisation that good intentions are not always enough and that there is still a large knowledge gap on how to lead and enable radical, long-term growth-generating innovation in many Australian organisations. I’m really glad that Greg accepted to facilitate this masterclass. I asked Greg to put a tennis racket in his suitcase, and I only have a couple of weeks left now to be ready for my chance to get revenge from the beating I received on his home court in Switzerland. So I better get back to it…
