STEPH CRUCHON

Hey everyone good evening I’m Steph I’m gonna be your host for this Itoday
number two we are live from Lausanne switzerland and we have people from a bit
everywhere around the world so that’s really really exciting to have all of
you guys please everyone can you just say hi to the camera oh yeah really good
really good to see you and thank you so much we are the fourth of a fifth of
january and everyone is here so this is great um so maybe you’re wondering
about the title of “Itoday apero” why an apéro? An “apéro” in the swiss or
french speaking culture is just a great time to you know enjoy your time with
friends to have a glass of wine to drink and to eat a bit of cheese and you
just talk with friends casually about the world and that’s what we are trying
to do with these eye to the appearance also for this apéro i have a little
surprise maybe some of you guys know that my family are actually wine makers
in switzerland that’s why that’s what my name means “Cruchon” and so they make
wine and the windows are right there and what we’re gonna do maybe this could
become a little tradition if this works is the first button I’m gonna open it
in front of you guys and drink it in front of you and yeah that’s too bad but
you can go to your own fridge and get some drinks and it doesn’t need to be
alcohol it can be coke i don’t care just make make yourself comfortable so
first button I’m gonna open the second bottle of this wine I’m gonna send it
to our speaker of today in Tel Aviv Israel yeah are you excited good very very
excited the third battle because i have three of the same one will send to the
person in the audience who will have the best question for Adi today and it’s
going to be addy choosing who is going to get the wow how cool is that yeah
that’s so fun um about our amazing speaker of today so we really want to
highlight people who are trailblazers in innovation who have something to say
about innovation also who are you know part of Itoday community and Adi was
the perfect person for that and Adi has released a book called Innovating
Through Chaos that was released oh this is good yeah so so i was reAding on
the e-book and anyway e-book or in paper it’s an amazing book about that
really captures the the time of crisis you know of now it was written during
the covet crisis and yeah your talk is going to be about about this very
specific times for innovation i met Adi i met Adi it was google right in 2017
we actually did a workshop together and i met her and i was like wow yeah
she’s great she has such a great energy and Adi is not anyone she has helped
literally hundreds of startups and very large companies to innovate companies
some of them are like ibm intel google waze you name them and yeah you your
mission is to show that any business or any company can innovate even at times
of crisis and that’s the content of the book and yeah you can assure you show
us how anyway it’s very very exciting to welcome you thank you so much for
coming all the way from Tel Aviv israel please everyone give a big round of
applause for Adi Mazor Kario, please

ADI MAZOR KARIO

thank you steph you you should come with me anywhere and just present me and
then i’ll feel like very very good you’re doing your job so well as a
moderator thank you so much i wanna welcome you all and thank you for I’m
showing my screen tell me if you see it right you see it all yeah perfect
great so i want to thank you to so you joined me after all these hours in
front of the screen and still you’re doing it with me just to listen to me so
I’m so honored to be with you today and i would love to you to to take part so
if you feel that you have any questions just right in and steph could i i urge
you just to stop me in the middle and ask any question you know whoever i came
to to tel aviv or israel know that we’re very outspoken just stop me and i’d
be so delighted to answer so you don’t need to wait for a specific moment just
ask me while you’re doing it i think it’s going to be more like fun for us so
now we can start so what we’re going to talk about today is one of my favorite
subjects and and one and it’s about product innovation but it’s more than that
it’s product innovation right now in the covered crisis in in uncertainty when
everything is chaos all around you so the question that I’m trying to answer
here with you is why now is the best time to create new products and it sounds
a bit weird because everything is changing around us and everything is unknown
so let’s think about it together so what we’re in the middle of is what we
call the black swan so it’s something really rare that happens once in let’s
say 100 um years and it’s really extreme so it has this big impact on our
lives and when people think about it in retrospect they say okay we could have
known that it’s gonna happen so i want you to imagine that you’re in this
really big change but it’s not covered can you imagine something that happens
to you and it’s a big change maybe in your life maybe something that you
encountered it doesn’t have to be a huge bad um pandemic and think about the
situation that everything is changing it could be the birth of your first
child it you it’s like you going to first kindergarten from home or something
like that and the situation is changing really really all around you and as a
person it’s not that different if it happens to everyone and only for you if
you’re a kid for example and when this really really big changes happen you’re
going into a survival or growth mode so you need to decide if you’re gonna
grow from it or you’re just gonna hang out and just wait till it passes and
and you could do whatever you’ve done before and you’re waiting to go back
home from from kindergarten for example or you want to go back to your jeans
after you had a baby so you can just imagine how big chains could could affect
you as a person and after all companies and and innovation is all from people
and how their experience their lives and and their what they’re doing right
now so let’s start because i want to get to know you i usually talk to people
in front of them so i at least see them and and i would like to ask you for
the first call so so steph would you could you share the first ball so i’ll
see who is like in front of me yes tell me if it works yay it works so tell me
who is in front of me so who am i talking to so i’ll know more or less i would
love to see it h people are answering yeah they are they are ah so sorry i
thought that you were seeing because I’m seeing it and I’m really enjoying it
you’re the only one okay yeah so i need to end the pro but people are still
voting like if we are 2 000 but no perfect so that’s the end of the pro so
tell me what’s the result because we see everything yes yeah there you go wow
we have lots of people from strategy and innovation so welcome and from design
where i come from and I’m gonna tell you in a minute and others so that’s
really intriguing what are the others and maybe you could write me in the chat
so i’ll know so thank you for sharing that and now we know more or less who’s
like in front of us so before we start i want to introduce myself and and why
like why am i here how did i come here and what’s my story more or less and i
usually tell it like when people see me like full and not only in my square
here but i want you to um to be connected to what I’m doing and to really
understand where i come from so my story begins and when i when I’m about I’m
pregnant with my second child and I’m doing my master’s degree and i i was a a
product designer in cyber security company in tel aviv and i really wanted
this stable company but but i had this vision that i want to be the best
designer ever and change the world at least like steve jobs i would say but
this company did not really change much they were like small and they didn’t
want to invent too much and um i felt like I’m not having any impact i felt
like a bit disappointed with what i did and a bit like a failure because many
people who were in my face degree in design and they some of them started a
startup some of them got into very big companies and really succeeded and i
felt like I’m a bit disappointed but you know i was pregnant with second child
so i forgot about it and then when i was in maternity leave a really big
change happened an unexpected change and i got a call from the office i stayed
at home for a few months with my kid and um they told me come to meet the ceo
he was my manager and i i know it was not it sounded not good but you know i
didn’t have any option so i took the small baby and placed it in the baby
carrier and and went to the office and i don’t remember like anything from
this talk it was like a i think like 20 minutes talk but i only remember that
when he fired me my baby started to cry because my heart pounded so fast
against his chest when he said it so that’s the only thing i really remember
and it was such a shock for me that everything is like changing and so fast
and i thought to myself like i came this is my baby that’s his daught my
daughter his sister and i said okay i will i pay rent how will i do my studies
how how could i do both career and and take care of my kids and do my m.a so
it was like a total shock and i was really afraid at that moment and after a
few weeks i got a call from a friend and it was really surprising and he told
me you know i can i can give you a client i someone i know is looking for a ux
and product person so why wouldn’t you do it and this company that i started
to work with the first company i worked with is klausen they’re very
successful company for product management and they’re still successful till
today which means they were very very successful startups to work like 20
years after my first time and what i really found out there is something that
i did not know the pm called me the pm from clarizen and showed me the the
matrix so show me the numbers they’re they were gathering all the numbers and
it was not that that’s a common that day today everybody’s is co have data and
measuring everything but back then it was very uncommon and he showed me the
numbers it was the first time i saw how many people started working with the
application and never left it after i came to work with them and it was the
first time i really understand the power and the impact of innovation powered
by design and what I’m doing for this company and and at that moment i decided
that i will work with as many products as possible and as many clients and
really understand how to create value and these are like some of the things
that i’ve done i’ve done hundreds of them and for me i i always try to make it
better and better and i got obsessed with product innovation and what makes a
product perfect and through the years i i knew that many of my clients and
many of the startups they failed because they didn’t have these methods that
we have today in order to learn and to get better and i wanted to collect what
i understand from all the projects and and all the smart people that i work
with you know we have lots of startups in in in israel so i had lots of them
and i decided to get better and better so at one point um i was called from
google to be part of their accelerator and i went through the the design
sprint methodology certification in google and then i they they took me and i
flew all over the world just to pass on like design experience innovation
workshops and and talks all over the world and i learned from each location
how people do innovation differently and and then entrepreneurs all over the
world work a bit differently and i learned from there and for me the
experience of really knowing from creating and and failing and learning is the
most important part that i try to pass on to to my clients today so i work
with lots of big companies and small companies and i learned through this
process and through this all of these people that i worked worked with i
learned from it so i created this invincible innovation method which is a bit
like design thinking and link startup and design screen and it’s it’s a it’s a
bit of all of that that could help clients in general and that helped me to be
a mother to my four kids today so i could either be like a career woman and
still be with who i love and and support them as i want so now more or less
you know who i am what we’re going to do in about like 25 30 minutes from now
so we went through the intro now we’re gonna understand why now why now one in
in this middle of this really great crisis and and it’s not only health it’s
financial it’s it’s everything is changing why why should companies innovate
why is this the right time then we understand how to gain advantage in in a
changing market what could companies do and and then we’re going to have a q a
so and what steph mentioned in the book is like these two parts one is
theoretical and the second one is practical what we’re going to go through
right now so we’re going to start step do you have any questions or we can
start no no i think i think we can stop you can just do this you know just
tell me okay so let’s start so what we see here is the stock market since
1971. so you see the stock market is going up and up and the gray areas are
recession when we had a very very bad time financially for the world and you
can see all the companies that are on the gray areas are companies who were
born within the recession for example you see um ibm you see lego you see h m
cnn so these are really big big companies that were established during the
recession and the question is is it like so so strange or not and and does it
make sense so you could see that if you’re taking the 1930s the big big great
great depression in the us you see that many innovations were created in the
30s the air condition the color film the commercial tv which are very very
important for our daily lives today and the question is is it like by
coincidence so you could say okay so many big companies were established
within the recession it doesn’t mean anything there are many other companies
that we know like amazon google facebook tesla they’re all created not within
a recession so what does that mean so we want to see how many of the
successful in general the number of successful companies were established
during the recession and we see that 57 of of successful startups companies
they were startups in the beginning started then so it means that they have a
higher option or higher um opportunity to be successful when they started
within the recession when it’s very very hard and what we’re gonna understand
is is why so we can say okay we see it right now that many people you see on
linkedin they’re changing their um title to ceo for a new startup you see many
entrepreneurs changing right i guess that’s it yeah i i live in on linkedin
actually this is not my house I’m on linkedin so i see many people changing
their titles and why why is that why are so many people changing so you could
say okay there there are more entrepreneurs many of them left or was fired
from big organizations they have lots of information and knowledge and data
and experience they could use that in order to be entrepreneurs maybe we have
more access to really great talent so if you have a company right now many of
the people who are fired could work for you maybe in the past they all worked
for someone else and now they are available and there and more than that you
could say only the very specific um prone to succeed startup would get get
funded so it’s like we have less capital vcs invest but they invest really in
the best startups and maybe this is why it works you could say that maybe
these are the reasons but I’m asking is that all of of of the reasons is that
all of it and one of the answers we could find is in this ted talk i guess
some of you have seen it and i hope not all of you because I’m going to ask a
question about it so don’t spoil so what’s the single biggest reason for
startups to succeed and this talk is um was like i think five years ago and um
this person researched he had a like a vc or accelerator for startup and he
researched the startups they worked with and i think it was 200 of their
startups and 200 outside their organization and he wanted to understand so he
took these aspects there are five aspects of factors for succeeding the idea
the team timing business model and funding so he he wanted to know which one
of them will make you more prone to succeed so this is my second poll and
steph will will join me with that and i would love to hear what you think
which one of these is the most important factor for a success of a startup
perfect wait for it so I’m selecting the second one I’m launching and you
should sit yeah so i see some people are voting that’s good you will see on
the replay it’s kind of cool you see the bars moving like that that’s good
like like we have our fourth election in israel we’re so used to these bars
all the time i think it’s like 50 of what we’re doing for the last two years
oh yeah because you guys are totally digital we’re gonna talk about that later
yeah yeah we don’t have electronic voting here yeah okay 22 vote persons voted
so perfect and I’m sharing the results so people say timing and team so when i
first saw the the ted talk i said it’s all about the team that’s what i was
sure and and it’s not surprising that most people think about that because
when you’re talking to vcs and and i just recently talked to one of the
biggest entrepreneurs and and vc founder in israel and they all talk about the
team okay so team is really important but apparently the second um the second
place takes everything so it’s all about timing so 43 of the success is
related to timing so that you have a great idea but it’s too early or too late
you’re you’re not going to do anything with it if it’s too early nobody’s
going to use it if it’s too late they will use the competitors or the one who
got it there first so this what happens and and it’s really important to see
that it’s 42 percent um important and team is only 32 which is like for me
it’s it’s really surprising and and you see that funding is only 14 the fact
that someone from a vc decide to fund a company doesn’t mean that it’s it’s
much better although it could be funded really like in the beginning for a
seed and more not further than more but still that that means that vcs don’t
know and everything so how do you as you know entrepreneurs someone who wants
to create innovation within the company could do a empirical and deliberate
understanding if it’s the right time for your idea how do you know that and
that’s the question so we need to understand the customer behavior we need to
understand first as us how when we woke up today how how much did we use
products like we woke up used a touch breath and we went to to use the soap
we’re doing makeup clothes everything we use so many products today but the
other question is how much of these did we buy today and we’re not talking
about groceries which is daily but how many of you did buy new shoes right now
or a new tooth toothpaste or new toothbrush that’s that’s the question and we
see we’re using much more than we’re buying because we we’re getting used to
this specific shoe and we are not going to change it so fast or we’re getting
used to the specific um i know monitor or computer we’re not gonna change it
so the question is how do we change behavior so we have this kind of trigger
we woke up or we want to start our day and we want to feel clean and this is
the need that we have and therefore we are going to do something we’re going
to go to wash ourselves to brush our teeth to to sing a song whatever but we
have a solution so some of you will open their facebook some of you will go to
to the bathroom whatever but this is the solution you currently have for this
unmet need that you want to feel fresh in the morning but if i want to make
you take my new product i need to really verify that it’s much much better so
in order to to make you change to my toothbrush i need to really make sure
that you understand that my solution is much much better and then you will be
able to think okay I’m willing to switch to an electric tooth toothbrush for
example because it will clean much more and it this is what the dentist is
doing and so forth but when we want to change we have this internal um
anti-power i would say first we’re anxiety from the new thing we’re not sure
it’s that good and second one we’re so used to one thing so why would we
change so we have the power to maybe we should try it but the other part is no
I’m so used to what I’m doing right now i wouldn’t change anything and when i
want to convince you to come to my product i need to deal with these
objections and you can you can think about any product that you’re using right
now i need to convince you to go from um let’s say using skype in order to use
slack why slack is better i need to really um make sure that you understand
what is the benefit another thing that could make me switch is that i have a
new need so right now when I’m buying food i want it to be healthy too because
I’m caring about my immune system person for example so it’s not enough that
there is this kind of um juice it could be a healthy juice or with vitamins
maybe i’ll do that so my need for healthy ingredients will will overcome the
need for just eating so when something is like i have a new me and you need i
will probably do it and we have lots of them right now for example um the hand
sanitizer it could be a bracelet with a hand sanitizer or a cream with with
sanitizing or all the cleaning is like sanitizing it’s not only cleaning and
making it look fresh so we’re giving this a gain creator so we have something
more and when we think we have something more not just cleaning but sanitizing
we still have this anti powers but we can overcome that because we believe
that we need to sanitize the room for example but the best way to to switch is
when i want to go to my usual solution and it’s not there could you think
about something that happened in like in the past few months and it’s not
there anymore right exactly yeah yeah so i think the best example here is zoom
because every time i see it and we’re using it right now i tell myself this is
the proof that design is not needed you just need to have a need to do
something because it performs the task but no not more than that it doesn’t
need to delight the user it doesn’t have to be super user-friendly it doesn’t
have to do anything I’m just using it because i cannot walk right now and and
and fly to stefan and drink with him the wine right so i don’t have any other
option so what we’re doing is customers are looking for another option to
communicate to go to work to to talk to their families abroad and you say okay
i have a pain reliever you zoom instead and when you’re saying it’s not only
giving you a gain and you’re getting more you’re getting a pain relieved
because i really need to go to work and i really need to communicate so when
it’s a pain reliever it’s so much easier and more than that i don’t have any
other choice so maybe I’m very ex i have anxiety i don’t want to use zoom but
do i have any option and maybe i I’m so used to going to my clients offices
but who cares so the anti-powers are so so low so this is so easy to make me
go for zoom i don’t need to think about it so what I’m saying is the change is
not because it’s it’s it’s also what we said right now but it’s not only
because the there are more entrepreneurs and more human capital and and and
the the vcs are investing well it’s because there are switches and it’s really
easy to switch people need different things and what they need is not working
anymore and then i want to as a consumer to have something else and then if
somebody offers me an option i would go with it so covet is the biggest
switching event in your lifetime you will never see people switch hopefully no
other option no other option because you know this is such a big event and
people are changing and you see everything is changing around you and it’s not
only the way people react and it’s not only the solutions they have it’s the
way that people think if i can share something from from switzerland you know
street people are very risk averse i will say and not too willing to try new
things and i think kovid brought a lot of flexibility in trying new things um
you know doing things a different way and yeah i can really see that that
could should change in switzerland at least yeah i think it’s it’s all around
you see people who are more strict with the way they’re thinking they see it’s
not controllable controllable so they wanted to believe they can control
everything and we will do this and this is what happens and they think and
they see it doesn’t work anymore so they have no other options just to make it
more flexible in their mind because if not they will be overwhelmed like for
nine months or or more right now right and they need to adjust that and say
okay what could be done so what i told you right now is like yeah you could
say Adi really nice but the leaders did not hear about it because most most
companies are not going out with new products and we don’t see that many
successful startups out there we don’t see the innovation budgets going to to
to the sky and saying yeah we have to to invest so is it something that nobody
heard about that’s a question so apparently mckenzie asked this question so
they had this research a survey and they asked it was called innovation in
crisis why it is more critical than ever and apparently 90 percent of the
leaders that they asked believe that kobe 19 crisis with fundamentally changed
the way they do business over the next five years and 85 percent of them said
that it will have a lasting impact on their customers need and want over the
next five years so if we’re saying that you see two-thirds of them are not say
they’re they are they don’t feel that they have the this is very challenging
for them but 90 of them know that this is what they need to do because they’re
saying it’s imp impacting our clients and what they need and what they know
what does that mean we need to answer these needs these are the opportunities
for us to grow right so my question is and and now and now we have another
information that nearly three out of four executives said that this is a big
opportunity for growth so most of the 85 for technology but not only from
technology people from consumers people from farmer financial retail they all
think it’s a really good opportunity to grow so this is like all over the
place Adid there is a really great question on the chat from sharon maybe
sherhun do you want to ask it sure yeah of course and this is not the only
statistic that i come across these days and this is statistic of june 2020
let’s say five months into the crisis we’re now in january 2021 six months
later if we would do the research again would the statistics be the same or is
the mindset of business changing because the investment potential that
organizations have is dramatically reduced now six months into the crisis yeah
i think that I’m not sure it will be i didn’t do the the i didn’t check it
right now but i believe that there is this mental process emotional process
you go through when you have this big change and it’s people we’re trying to
avoid it first we’re trying to okay let’s just put our head down it will pass
and this is what we’re doing and then we see it’s not passing we’re starting
to understand things have changed and only when we have understanding yet yeah
this is has changed now I’m ready and i have the energy to do something
different only then you could do it you cannot do it before that so i think
that leaders and people in general working employees everyone who believed in
the beginning that it will pass know right now that it won’t pass and more
than that even if it passes it will not be go back to what it was we know
things have changed so and it’s fundamentals change so the companies are
selling their stores in like they’re not renting anymore they’re they’re not
coming to the allowing everyone to work from outside especially in technology
people are reluctant to go to to educate to a big conferences or to sports
events even if you had a football game right now I’m not sure that everybody
would come the same as they were they will be more afraid okay so this is what
i think and my question to you why most companies are not innovating right now
if they know they need to do it so what would be your answer steph tell me
what people are saying because I’m not looking at the chat right now yeah so
don’t hesitate to write you to write your answers um if i can share my my own
perception i think i totally agree with you the first wave in europe at least
was very scary and everyone just sat at the side of the road and waited that
it’s gonna pass and you know we are a company working with innovation and we
saw that there was quite a freeze of all projects and nothing happened second
big wave it’s very different we can see that now there is probably more
maturity in the whole situation and companies have yeah have accepted that
there is a change and that you need to move forward so at least from our own
perspective we don’t see you know we didn’t see a huge top of the business or
interest in innovation and even the opposite we we see that it’s catching up
like people are really they need to get together you know they need to find
ways to work together to move forward to accept the situation and you know
there is that exploit explorer thing and companies are more willing to explore
yeah i totally agree i feel that in my business too so um i i agree what
you’re saying so tell me what what people are okay so yeah um so there is can
you just repeat the questions so i don’t so why most companies are not
innovating right now yeah so oh there is a lot to have so jiren says a lack of
funds paying salaries first eduardo says perhaps we don’t yet see them they
are working on their products right now that will be launched in the coming
months for years xavier says they believe innovation is expensive marcus says
afraid of taking additional risks they really want to win the wine mihai says
still barely surviving from inertia isabel uncertainty believe there is still
a way back to what was normality vaccines are helping to go back paul says
innovation pissed up innovation is not in company’s dna so that was changed
right mihai maybe lack of cash because not a good time andrea oh my god so
much yeah thank you for for taking part in that yeah why some companies
understand they need to change they are still so many afraid of the challenge
to the status quo another priority seller is first okay yeah super super cool
answers actually yeah a lot of reasons yeah so so i totally agree with some of
you and first innovation is risky and you always feel that you don’t have to
risk something when you’re in risk so people are at risk but the main reason
that i talk about mainly in my book is fear and there is always fear from the
unknown and there is always fear from innovation especially right now because
companies say okay currently we have money and maybe lots of it but will we
have that in a year or two and the question is how can we maintain our core
products services what we are doing money out of right now and still do
something different and most of them say okay now we’re gonna close everything
just go into a um survival mode we asked about growth of survive so they’re
going into survival mode and not doing anything different but they know that
they are missing the opportunities and they are not taking it because they are
afraid and the question is like when we are thinking about fear is it’s
actually the fear of the unknown is possibly the fundamental fear underlying
all anxiety forms so there was a research trying to understand anxiety and why
people are afraid and when we think about us as kids we’re all afraid of the
dark more or less to a certain degree when we grow up we’re less afraid but
why are we all afraid of the dog because it’s the unknown we don’t know what’s
going to happen the biggest unknown of of course is death so this is what we
are afraid of so the unknown something that we cannot control that we don’t
know what’s going to happen we don’t know how can we what will happen and what
how will we confront it and how will we handle it is something that we are
very afraid of as human beings especially right now that we have all this
stress of we don’t know and if we’re healthy what happens to our parents what
what’s going to happen to to the financial situation the economy everything is
changing so we’re saying okay in this situation I’m just going to survival
mode and this is what most leaders are doing and the way the leaders are
handling uncertainty is related to if they are trained to work in uncertainty
if they are experiencing uncertainty for example innovation is something that
you do and as insurance you are doing insurance when you are not sure you need
it and when you need it you use it so if you have this skill and ability to
work under uncertain conditions in in uncertain times you know how to do it
when something like that happens if you don’t have these capabilities within
your company right now to start it’s it’s kind of difficult you could do it
but it’s more difficult and one of the things that i write in the book is that
we are in israel so used to being in an uncertain situation yeah this is
always yeah so we’re always living in uncertainty we’re always like nothing is
like stable here everything is changing all the time and we’re kind of used to
it so one of the words that i we have in hebrew is called balagang is like a
mess everything is chaos everything is not working and we’re used to it so
we’re a bit fond of the word so it’s when you go into a room and you say this
this room has balagan it means that yeah it’s it’s it’s not a bad thing so we
we get used to it and it’s a bit messy but it’s part of our lives and this is
how israelis see their life and they are not settled in i think that in
general they are not calm and not settled so we’re always in in uncertainty
and steph told me that there is another language that this word is used in in
the same context more or less yes yeah so so it apparently it’s not only a
hebrew word but i think this is why when something happens we’re so prone to
do something so you know like there is the freeze fight or flight right so
many companies would go into freeze and maybe even like avoiding we don’t want
to do anything with it and some of them will do something which is like the
the fight thing and and this is what we have in israel we’re always like we’re
doing more thinking less but doing more we’re always proactive and that’s why
we’re doing more innovation in general i think a great illustration is what’s
happening with the the vaccines of kovid right now like israel is just
refreshing it and all the other countries they are kind of somehow trying or
starting to think about it now and yes you know yeah i think that i think that
i read that we have like 11 percent of the population always already
vaccinated and yeah we’re a small country but still it’s it’s much more than
other countries and i think it’s connected to what we do when we’re anxious
we’re anxious as others so we are afraid of what’s going on in as any other
country but for us we need to act we need to do something you know to fix it
and and when you if maybe some of you have been to israel and you know that
everybody has an idea how to do things we are not going by the rules most of
the cases like if you have line for i know for a shop or you have a line for
the bank you will never have a very strict line you always have people going
around it because they have other ideas how can we build this line although
it’s it has been tried in the past i guess and this is how we do things so i
think that the way that we handle as a country in the way that that israelis
are thinking is something that i i I’m trying to convey to other companies
when i come it’s not like I’m telling you you have to live in uncertainty
because somebody who is like born i know in sweden for example maybe we have
someone in sweden so from the first moment that he’s born he has like i know
that i will have a job i will have a roof on over my head i i will not need to
work their hard to to have university it’s all from the state so we there is
something that you’re you feel very safe within and when you’re very safe and
stable you are not looking to change anything right there is a great story in
your book about you freaking out at the beginning of the the first wave and
getting a job proposal maybe can you share that story yeah yeah so what
happened is like before the the copy started i think it was even november
before i was a um i was called to one one of my clients called me and we
worked and when they were a startup when they just beg had the beginning and
the the first beta version and they were very very successful and they were
purchased by a amazon so now they are part of amazon he told me you know come
and work with us be part of amazon and i thought about it and i really love
them they’re a very very good clients and i really enjoyed working with them
and it’s in tel aviv and it’s like it was a very good option but i said no i
said like i can do it like half a half time but i cannot do it and then when
it started they covet crisis i think in about middle of march he called me
again and they didn’t find the right person for it and he told me maybe right
now when we’re all working from home you don’t need to be commuting every day
maybe you would come to amazon and work for us and although i said no way i
knew it’s not for me i was so anxious and afraid and i said okay why what will
happen right now do i need to to try new things and to to go into like
changing my business toward more innovation and selling new products and why
would i do that i have the option that jeff will pay and it was it sound
really nice for me and i said yes because i was afraid not because i wanted a
job and luckily they said no so in the end I’m still here with you instead of
working nicely with amazon maybe it’s an assumption but i have the feeling
that probably entrepreneurs are handling a bit better with that unknown you
know that’s being scared of the future because we know how it is it’s always
the same we never know in five months or six months if we gonna have business
or clients but i guess for employees who chose the big corporate life and the
regular salary i think the kobe situation was super scary because it’s totally
out of um you know right of course i think that in general people who are
entrepreneurs who self-employed they have their own business or company if
they know that there are fluctuations in what they’re doing sometimes there
are too much work or too much clients and sometimes it’s much less and you
cannot really navigate there so you have you don’t have like what you have in
big companies they will hire 10 more people will fire 10 more people no
problem it doesn’t work when you have a small business but i think that the
fact that we’re so used to these changes as people and even we seek these
changes because we want the challenge we want it to be interesting we want to
we don’t want to be bored in the same position because this is what we love to
do and i think that at this time although it’s scary and i gave in a very good
example from the book that you mentioned and um i think that people who are
used to creating new things and to to be entrepreneurs and and to really try
things out and see sometimes it works sometime it doesn’t but they are living
in this uncertain situation many years many years or many days of the year
they’re feel they feel less threatened i would say um Adi you know we have a
challenge about winning a bottle of wine for the best question right and i
would like to hear if some people here do have questions and don’t be afraid
to unmute yourself and ask your question if it’s a good one who wants to start
don’t be shy yeah um thank you for your speech and writing all these ideas and
this energy just one little thing that bothers me a little bit is that the
idea of you know you need to take risk and to feel unsafe to take the risk and
go in on innovation and i was checking on something on my mind and when you
said that fountains for freedom it has been ranked like the second most
innovative country in the world by the world economic forum i put the link in
the in the chat so how do you explain that because it seems like not very
congruent with what has been israel it’s nice to me you’re asking about israel
why is it so why we have so many stories sweden is second and israel is the
second yeah I’m very surprised to hear that i would love to hear the numbers i
know that they’re they’re they’re not considered an innovative country but i
don’t know the numbers as you show them but i guess is that the world economic
forum so it’s quite i would say and i don’t know many companies who big
unicorn companies coming other than spotify maybe coming from sweden but maybe
maybe i don’t know it well enough tell me what what are the big companies who
came from sweden other than spotify i would love to know i i don’t know how
how do they skype for instance i don’t know maybe i should read more about
sweden but i know it depends on how what do you see as as innovative right i
think behind what mija is mentioning ikea in the chat yeah it’s pretty ikea
it’s pretty i don’t know if ikea is is an innovative would you say it’s it’s a
design-oriented company but I’m not sure it’s innovative you see they’re doing
more or less the same thing and by the way about ikea i was one of the
speakers next to a speaker from ikea and they changing all their business
model in the next three years so they know that things are not working as they
wanted and for many years they had more or less the same idea and it worked
really well and they didn’t change it and so i i i cannot answer something
that i don’t know but if if i would measure innovation i would ask how much
budget so how many of the vc funding is going to this country that’s what i
would ask and i know that per capita so per person the first one is is the
silicon valley and the second one is israel per person how much money per
person you have but maybe it’s measured differently so i cannot really know
you have the link i’ll read it i read it okay thank you um who else has a good
question there is a butternut sticks if somebody asked you could read me yeah
there was a question from matthieu mene about startups you want to ask it yeah
sure hi eddie i was i have a question marie to going back to the right time
for for launching a project because sometimes they say okay if you are the
only one either you find a gold mine or other you didn’t understand the
situation that was a question more already to the right timing so do you think
that’s the right timing to launch the product is when you have other teams or
other startups working on the same idea meaning that the society is mature
enough to receive it i think that when you build the product to match the
needs then you need out there you will probably have more options to succeed
when you’re going from a technology what you believe would be a good idea it’s
not the same as going to really understanding the market the needs the what
has changed and going from there and once you are doing the right path and
understanding what are the things that might be relevant right now and test it
out again and again you have much more um less risk and more possibilities to
succeed and right now there are so many new opportunities out there so many
things has changed so many needs our unmet needs are out there people need
things and they don’t have any answer for it people would like to go and laugh
in in a stand-up show they would like to go to a football game they would love
to go to an a conference they would love to so many things they would love to
be within groups of gathering together feeling the energy of people and they
cannot do it so if somebody would find some kind of a solution to any of these
problems and any of these needs they will surely be more prone to succeed
thanks yeah definitely great if i may um are we talking strictly about
startups here or are we also including innovation that can happen in existing
businesses and if we’re talking about birth what would be um the let’s say the
biggest difference in approach between the two right i totally i thank you for
a question it’s a great question so first I’m talking about innovation in
general either from entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs so it’s either startups or
within companies companies could create lots of new product solutions for
their current clients or for the new clients so you can see it like the most
obvious example is amazon right so amazon is going into health right now and
they invested four billion dollars for things that are related to kovid so of
course it could be done from within companies and the difference is how you do
innovation within big companies compared to small ones so um many of the
things that i’ve done through the years are with startups and small companies
and in general we don’t have many established companies in israel so we’re so
young so we don’t have like companies as you have in europe with 40 50 years
company in the same like a father and son inheriting the the factory whatever
we don’t have that so when you’re doing innovation with is something which is
more established or a bigger company it’s really different than doing it with
a small team of two to five people and they are brainstorming and working from
morning to night and morning to night and thinking together and what they need
to do is so so different so the fact that that companies have the abilities to
have lean startup and they know how to do it doesn’t mean that they do really
exercise and execute well because there are so many preconditions and so many
obstacles they need to to um to to think about and to um to tackle on their
way and that’s why it’s it’s it’s like taking what is working for small
companies maybe in the silicon valley and taking it to bigger companies and
what i’ve been trying to understand is what is different what is this gap that
we could in in product innovation how can we do it in bigger companies and and
i and the first thing is i think the connection with the users so when you’re
a small company a small startup you’re you have to to talk to people you don’t
have any other option if you will not talk to people you will surely fail but
when you’re a big corporate you say okay we have so many clients we’re not
sure we have to talk to them we have our sales team we have a customer care
and we we know everything about them they’re working with us currently so
what’s the problem but the problem is they might change maybe they bought your
solution two or three or five years ago and now they need something else maybe
the market is changed the competitors change maybe what you’re doing is not
good enough maybe you could make it much better and you’re not really
understanding what is needed so the connection is not there in big companies
although they have so many advantages they are not really using it and they
have so many advantages and they’re not using it well when they’re innovating
yeah okay thanks a lot if i can share something from our perspective is um the
cove and the going remotes brought us easy access to customers users now
everyone in the world knows how to use zoom for example you can send the link
the person is going to be here answering your questions and i could really
compare you know like how hard it was to get testers back then you had to
invite them to a specific venue to it it was super complicated and now you
just send the link people are like oh yeah I’m on zoom anyway they click on
the link they are here and you have the right person this is amazing yeah
right right it’s it’s in in some certain degree it’s easier for sure do you
want us to continue and then we’ll have another session for q a of course yeah
yeah yeah yeah okay so first we you could i’ll have a link to the free version
of the book so what we talked right now is part of what we have in the book
and we’re almost in the last part of the discussion so i would love to answer
a question about that and the book has quotes and one of the one one of the
quotes that i really love is the riskiest thing you we can do is just maintain
the status quo and who said that is bob iger he’s the ceo of disney which is a
very creative innovative company and i really believe in that so people say
that innovation is risky but in the long run and and they’re true they’re
right because many of these initiatives innovative products innovative
projects they are not working so i think like 90 or 94 of these um internal
startups or in startups in general are not growing and they are not coming
into a full mature successful product truly not a unicorn as everyone wants
but still if you are not doing innovation you’re risking yourself because the
the world is changing and you’re staying in one spot and everybody could just
come and win the competition if you’re staying in one in one specific place
and you have so many examples from from the business world so the third part
of what I’m going like the last part before the the q a is how do you gain
advantage in a changing world and i think it’s connected to what mihai would
just ask me so how can you as a company find a new opportunity for future
growth right now so I’m teaching people and we’re where we have hands-on a
program called catalyst and we’re I’m taking these groups of innovators it
could be like within within a company or from different companies and we’re
going through these stages you might know some of them it’s very it’s very
connected to design thinking or design sprint or lean startup but it’s going
from analyzing understanding what’s going on so i’ve done so many design
sprints and sometimes i felt that the beginning is lacking we need to
understand what is the the challenge we need to understand what is the
situation before you jump on to the solution which is very a good solution for
creating a new product within design sprint but what happens before so we’re
analyzing the strength of the company first so there are so many strengths we
need to analyze the market and the clients so once we understand that we’re
deriving all the ideas from the analyze stage and then we have what i call
focus most company most um systems will call it id8 because we are we’re
having so many ideas out there but for me the focus on a specific the right
idea is the most important because you could have lots of ideas and many of
them you could not create they are not visible they are not the right solution
they are great for another time so forth so how can you take all of what you
know and to focus on the right one then we are making a prototype or a way to
test it out we’re testing and then deciding and we’re going in iteration so
this is very similar to other things but it’s stretched in order to allow a
more successful initiative within a company it takes longer time and then it
relax trips into the organization you could talk to your users you could talk
to other people within the company you could talk to stakeholders you could
get gather more information you have more time to really test it out
thoroughly and and you have the capability to really understand what is the
process of innovation while you’re going through these stages and not only
like in one cycle what is the typical time the like time frame of this so it
takes like six weeks so each week we’re going to one of these stages but it
could take a few months but it’s not more than that because we want to go and
drill into each of these days so each week we’re taking one of these steps
they were taking an exercise they need to go out of the building try it out
give the results and we’re discussing it and we’re seeing where we stand and
then we with this understanding we’re going to the next phase and while we’re
doing that we’re connecting with maybe our managers or our stakeholders
whoever is responsible for the budget maybe someone from finance maybe someone
from legal we’re trying to make it merge all together and to have a buy-in
from other people because in many cases when i go and do like very short
workshops it’s really great for small companies who want to adjust something
but to create really new things you have to get the buy-in from other um
people and other roles within the company and this takes time and without that
you might be very disappointed if you have a great idea and it will not go up
and will not grow in any sense make sense cool so i want to focus on the
analyze part so how can you know what opportunities to seize the what are the
opportunities that you should seize today and I’m going to take you only a few
points in this analyze stage and first is analyzing the market what is the
trains what are the competitors what are the risks how can you learn from
others and others mistake which could be very valuable for you and how can we
pre-validate and what everything maybe your commit competitors or someone else
pre-validated some of your assumptions so you could take it from there so
what’s going on outside then we’re analyzing the strength of a company and the
strength of of the company is their market how are they compared to these
competitors what are there in the domain their expertise the data the ip the
the knowledge within the company the technologies their brand so forth so
there are so many advantages you could use and analyze in order to understand
okay we have this data we have this ip maybe we could utilize in order to do
something with it and most companies do not start with it and what they’re
doing there is trying to have this swat understanding what are the strengths
what are the downsides what are they not good at but usually what we grow as
people from is from our strength even like when we are kids we know there’s
some of the subjects in school we’re very good at and probably this is
something that we’ll grow from i don’t know many people decided to take a
profession of a subject that they really hated at school because it doesn’t
happen because you hate it and you are not good with it so why would you do a
profession out of it right but once you have a talent for something and you
have strength this is where you could surely grow and if you know as a company
what your strengths are it’s really important and the last one which everybody
knows is to analyze your customers so we really need to understand and to
listen to them and to do interviews and to understand who is doing and what is
doing and how in in this certain situation and and we’re doing how might we
and empaty mapping and user analysis user research and these are things that
are very established right now within companies if they have very profound
research department but not all companies have that and not all companies know
how to really understand what’s going on outside they know it surely from the
business perspective perspective but when we’re talking a product or a
solution that is a new one and it’s not there or enriching or reinventing your
current product you have to really think again what’s going on out there with
your clients and we’re going through all these stages when we’re doing the
analyze the last thing i want to show you is some of my clients so the first
one is shamik from from google and i worked with their accelerator for so many
years the second one is the mayor from ibm and we worked on several products
for the ibm security and the last one is from amazon he’s one he’s the one who
called me from amazon it was cloud enduro and work and and then in amazon we
have like a few um meetings there and and and for me just to have this
connection and help these different um and people grow and these different
products and projects grow for me it’s like this is what i love to do the most
and and i I’m sure that right now there are so many people and and that could
find what will grow their companies and help their clients on the other side
and just match that within reinventing your solutions or creating new ones so
this is what i love to do and if you want to know more these are like you can
go to invincibleinnovation.com or to find out about the book you will get a
link to to download the free version

STEPH CRUCHON

Amazing so actually they got the link it’s already in the chat so look in the
chat Eglé posted the link you can click there just you have to go to validate
the linkedin or whatever and then you’re gonna get the book for free right

thank you so much thank you so much Adi so please everyone give a big round of
applause for Adi because the q a are gonna be in remo so big round of applause
it was really really great to have you all the way from from tel aviv israel
really cool to have all your perspective about innovation during covet times
and yeah what we’re gonna do now you’re gonna be able to ask all your
questions to Adi and you can still compete for winning that nice bottle of
wine but at the end Adi’s gonna tell me who is gonna get the bottle and Eglé
if you can paste the link to the remo so if you don’t know remo it’s a you
just click yeah it’s in the chat right now so you just click on this link and
you’re gonna be able to join me on remote so you have to validate your camera
your microphone and then you join the event and yeah it’s kind of cool so you
can actually see it wait I’m going to share my screen it’s going to be easier
for you to see yeah so it looks like this basically it’s tables you can just
double click you join the table you want Adi is going to be at one of the
table right there and you can move from table to table so you double click you
move from table to table and you can be able to discuss with everyone who was
here tonight really really great to have you with us Adi thank you so much
thank you for having me it’s been such a pleasure and i would love to see you
there cheers see you very soon on remo see you on the other side bye bye
[Music] bye [Music] [Applause]

ITODAY APERO #1