Getting Innovation Right by Seth Kahan

I finished this book in December 2025. I recommend this book 8/10.

Why you should read this book:

This book will give you the order of how to approach innovation in a systematic way. How to look for it. How to commit to it. How to ensure equal value of it.

Get your copy here.

🚀 The book in three sentences

1. Do intelligence gathering

2. Make it around value for all

3. Ensure proper communication

📝 My notes and thoughts

• P22. There are several basic tactics that can be used to take advantage of changing market conditions. They can be executed independently or combined to create more complex responses, such as the Turnaround. The three that I will elaborate on there are:

  • Stop the drop

  • Shift to Ascent

  • Soar

• P39. If your people are telling you they don't have time for innovation because there is "real work" to be done, they are telling you that innovation and their jobs are competing with each other. That's bad news because their jobs will always win. A solid foundation ensures that you have the capacity for innovation, which often demands time, attention, and energy from the same people who are responsible for operations. It should never come into conflict with mission-critical activities. A primary function of a proper foundation is to ensure business on and new growth is pursued, each without compromising the other.

• P62. Build innovation capacity:

  • Three forces can bring down a company: operational pressures, innovation stress, and changing market forces.

  • The three interdependent components of an innovation foundation include leadership, talent management, and idea management.

  • Leaders create a solid underpinning for innovation through talking to the right people, articulating the way forward, and building partnerships.

  • Hire and develop people who understand and embrace the power of innovation.

  • Finding and developing the right ideas is a key business challenge of innovation, requiring a leadership mandate, stakeholder contribution, and robust development of winning ideas.

• P71. The eight steps of an intelligence effort. Because outcomes, scope, and circumstances vary, every intelligence effort is different. However, every effort should include the following eight core steps in sequence:

  • Define scope

  • Determine goals

  • Consult data sources, news media, and trend experts

  • Conduct interviews with key stakeholders

  • Secret shopping to test quality from the customer's perspective

  • Iteratively share results and receive direction

  • Due diligence for controversial, high-value, and high-risk issues

  • Format and present results for maximum impact

• P72. Three questions will help you determine scope:

  • What aspect of your business do you want to improve?

  • How will this intelligence effort generate success for you?

  • In the best of all circumstances, how will your situation progress?

• P82. Pull together a S.W.A.T Team. These are veterans with specialized tools and skill sets who can go into a high-stakes situation and execute well under pressure. Their experience provides them with the knowledge required to make the right decision in a high-risk environment, and their expertise allows you to rely on their results. Here are five guidelines for creating and use your S.W.A.T team:

  • Identify trusted professionals you can rely upon. Choose them using three criteria. They must be able to (1) process confidential information, (2) apply relevant skills and experience, and (3) work constructively within your intelligence effort.

  • Assemble your team and explain why you chose them, the circumstances of your concern, and the uniqueness of their mission.

  • Set specific, clearly articulated goals. For example, determine if the market will favor the acquisition of our chief competitor. Product report to document findings, reasoning, and recommendations.

  • Convene them in parallel to the larger intelligence initiative. Have them focus only on the area that is a great concern. A S.W.A.T team should be dedicated only to the high-risk task, not used for general intelligence work.

  • When their task is done, disband the team. Their efforts should be intensive, time-bound, and cease when their mission is accomplished.

• P84. Five principles for data presentation: You must ensure that your data is well organized to be helpful—that key indicators influence the organization's principles. Here are five principles for data presentation that can help you keep your focus on the critical message in the data:

  • Use key indicators to organize the presentation. These are the indicators that help you make decisions. If an indicator causes you to switch from one conclusion to another, it is key. Use these to categorize and display your data.

  • Accompany data with easy-to-understand narratives that explain their meaning.

  • Experiment with visual displays until you find natural correlations clearly expressed in easy-to-understand formats.

  • Include your intelligence agents in your initial presentations so they are on hand to answer questions.

  • Keep your first few presentations to a minimum of 10-20 minutes, providing a clear and simple overview of the main results only. Let questions drive the granularity of the rest of the presentation. The concerns of the listeners can then drive the details presented and shape the thrust of the content provided.

• P88 The eight elements of an intelligence contract:

  • Situational summary

  • Objective

  • Measure of success

  • Value to the organization

  • Methodology and timeline

  • Joint accountabilities

  • Terms and conditions

  • Acceptance

• P94. When you know what your clients and partners believe is most valuable, your innovation program is more effective. You can focus your efforts on what interests your clients the most. For example, if they depend upon you to get them fresh fruit and vegetables every day, then providing them with fresh meat, too, will likely make you more valuable in their eyes. When you see your operations from varying viewpoints, you sometimes spot opportunities to parlay what you are doing today into a new field altogether. In that case, you are pivoting—a variation on shifting perspective that turns on what is good and solid to reach into new profitable endeavors. Whether you are leveraging customer knowledge to deliver more or better value, or pivoting into a position to offer entirely new value, you are mastering crucial innovation moves. All of these innovation moves are based upon your ability to shift perspective, see your business from multiple points of view, and take advantage of those angles for your benefit.

• P98. Four techniques you can use to achieve a change in viewpoints that allows you to spot real options for innovation:

  • Isolate and examine the steps in your value chain.

  • Become your competition.

  • Seek out and highlight your weak spots.

  • Look to creative deviants for inspiration.

• P103. He brokered knowledge between individuals. As an example, in his travels, he might come across someone struggling with keeping pavement from dissolving in the Amazon jungle and another having success with asphalt in high humidity conditions in a lab in Switzerland. He would introduce the two and often be present when they actually met. He was known for this kind of matchmaking. He brought people together all the time, arranging for groups to meet and discuss critical issues at gatherings large and small. He handed out lists of publications and contact information for experts in the field. Pre-computer, he used the three-ring binder. Then he went to diskettes. Then it was email. The technology was always secondary to the aim, which was to connect all the experts in his field. I call him a social architect because he designed gatherings and engineered introductions.

• P106. Most organizations' fundamental objective can be summed up in two words: targeted growth. When you consider the innovations you might pursue, you must ensure they align with your strategic objectives—most likely targeted growth—or you risk undertaking innovation that pulls your organization off purpose. I recommend a four-step process to ensure that your innovation aligns with strategy:

  • Identify new assumptions that differ from those you currently hold

  • Explore scenarios, projecting the results you anticipate if you adopt one or more of these assumptions

  • Incorporate the assumptions that would lead to increased value that is aligned with your organization's strategy and goals.

  • Develop innovations that spring from the new assumptions

• P114. Four forces of disruption:

  • Customers are facing challenges

    • Clients are demanding more

    • Some are stressed, making poor, short-sighted decisions

    • Customers are inspecting costs, aggressively shaving expenses

  • Industries are upending

    • Technology breakthroughs are incessant

    • Employees must be educated to take advantage of new capabilities

    • Businesses find it challenging to keep up with the investments required to compete

  • Competition is fierce

    • Stalwart monoliths are toppling

    • New contenders are rising to prominence faster than ever

    • Faster, more effective responses are required

  • New business models are emerging

    • New products and services continuously entice clients to shop elsewhere

    • New ways of generating value attract your customers

    • Breakthrough revenue generators roll over traditional operations

• P126. When a disruption first occurs for your customers, there is a short window of opportunity for you to be of service before they find other solutions. This window opens every time your customers are dissatisfied. When they are disgruntled, they want badly for things to be better, and this desire is a force you can harness. That is why IU calls this time span the Opportunity Window. During this window of time, a new value is in the foreground for those who are looking for it. But most are not looking for it. In other words, market recognition of this value is weak. Thus, it represents an Opportunity Window for the savvy.

• P130. Five techniques can increase your capacity for fast, effective responses to market changes of all kinds, including adversity:

  • Build a customer-value mindset

  • Scan for trouble brewing—be ready

  • Simulate rapid response scenarios

  • Read and share success stories

  • Make responsiveness a leadership competency

• P138 If you want to build your capacity as a leader to generate great results fast, you must first identify what this means in the context of your business. What type of positive impact would be meaningful for your organization? Discussing this with our team is a valuable exercise as it will give direction to those who are developing and leading the execution of the strategy. The conversation alone is insufficient to create a positive impact, but it is a necessary step. From my work with other clients, I know that positive impact can mean:

  • Getting solutions to clients before competitions

  • Quickly letting go of markets that are not primary targets while directing staff time to the highest priorities

  • Using data to create solutions that work better for customers

  • Creating tighter relationships with key partners based on exceptional benefits

  • Upholding excellence in the quality of service across the globe, regardless of local challenges

  • Reaching the right customer at the right time with the right solution

• P139. For example, take the last point on the list above, Reaching the right customers at the right time with the right solution. Pull your senior team together and, as a group, review each of the core responsibilities. Your conversation might go like this:

  • How can marketing be improved to help us reach the right customers, do it at the right time—when they are ripe for our services—with a solution that makes the most sense to them?

    • What are we already doing that supports this? How can we amplify these?

    • What are we doing that is counter to this positive impact? How can we address these crosscurrents?

  • How does information and knowledge work to help us touch the right clients when need is most acute?

    • Does it assist with narrowing down the solutions we present so the client feels served best?

    • What capabilities do we have that are taking us in this direction today? Can they be bolstered, grown, fortified?

    • What are we doing to get in our own way? What can be done about it?

  • How do operations move us to the right clientele at the right time and bring to market the best offerings?

    • Are there exceptional wins we have had in the past? What were they, and what can we learn from them?

    • What practices have taken place that are worth replicating? What would it take to make them standard operating procedure?

    • Do we have examples of botching this? Was it a single occurrence, or are we regularly dropping the ball? What is the best way to address this?

• P140. A section on making a Value Assessment.

• P164. Questions to Identify Value Drivers:

  • Why do you want this?

  • What will this do for you?

  • Why is this important to you right now?

  • What will work best for you?

  • Why is this trait/quality/request so important?

  • Is there anything about the current environment or your situation that makes this particularly important?

  • Do you have other needs that you would like addressed?

  • Is there any way this can be altered or improved upon, that would make this much more valuable than it is now?

  • Is anything happening tomorrow or in the future that makes this particularly important today?

  • How will this make a difference for you?

  • Can this be used to advance your position, your standing, or your esteem among your customers?

  • Will having this enable something else that you prize?

  • How can this be realized in the best possible way?

  • Is this connected to other needs?

  • Are there others I can speak to or work with to ensure your success?

  • Is there a back story?

  • What is the best possible outcome, regardless of how impossible or improbable it may seem?

• P166. The ValueGram

• P189. Four ways to succeed at being noticed:

  • Address your customers' pressing concerns

    • Conduct intelligence in advance so you know and understand what is on the minds of the people you are trying to reach. Identify how you can help them with the pressures and problems they are facing today. Rely on establishing relevance to capture their attention.

  • Lead with the miracle:

    • Don't start with background or justification. Put your compelling content up front, first. Use it to grab attention.

  • Provide entertainment:

    • Amusement has long been used because of its attention-grabbing nature. The trick is to switch seamlessly into content without creating a bait-and-switch experience where the customer feels they have been tricked. Instead, use the entertainment as a segue, a natural transition into your content.

  • Tell a story:

    • People are story-consuming animals. We use stories to construct meaning in our lives. Everyone loves a good story. Use compelling narrative to pull customers into your world.

• P191. Three techniques for getting customers to check you out:

  • Present compelling reasons to dig deeper

    • Once you have succeeded at securing your customer's attention, provide compelling motivation for them to peel back the covers and take a good look at what you have.

  • To do this, appeal to their:

    • Sense of duty and professional discipline

    • Market position

    • Obligation to drive value

    • Commitment to a cause

  • Each of these unabashedly courts the self-interest of your target audience. This is key to increasing their level of engagement. When they detect that your offering will help them with something that is already keenly established as a priority, they will be motivated to learn more.

  • Supply irresistible content

    • Through your intelligence efforts, identify solutions your customers are intensely interested in pursuing. Link your work to these solutions. This requires seeing the world through your clients' eyes, providing what they are searching for, and reaching them through their preferred media.

  • Captivate their attention

    • Providing engrossing content. Choose material designed to hold their interest. this includes

      • Riveting breakthroughs in their field

      • Compelling and relevant stories of others who have faced the same challenges

      • Absorbing accounts that address critical issues your clients are facing and provide details they are hungry for

• P200. Four techniques for creating a shared stake in success:

  • Exceed expectations when it comes to serving your clients. Meet with them face-to-face. Discuss how your efforts can translate into creating a better future for them, starting now.

  • Invest in intelligence with the goal of identifying mutual goals you share with your clients. Do your homework. Align your best efforts with improving your customers' situation. Let them know it and report to them your setbacks and wins.

  • Write up your understanding of what your customers need in an easy-to-read one-page summary and distribute it widely. Ask for comments and feedback. Then act quickly and decisively on what you learn. Demonstrate your intent with results that matter. Publish your results through the same channels.

  • Find ways to see the world through your customers' eyes, to understand and appreciate their perspective. Customers will see things differently from you, and they will only be invested in your offerings if you give them what they value.