Bringing the Outside In

I recently invited Soon Yu to speak to our Willis Towers Watson innovation network. Soon is a former serial entrepreneur and led the innovation function at VF Group, where he helped to build a $2B innovation pipeline. If you aren’t familiar with Soon or his work, you should definitely check him out.

I invited Soon to talk to my colleagues as part of our “Bringing the Outside In” series, designed to challenge our thinking and bring a new perspective to our work. Soon described some of his journey at VF Group (the parent company for North Face, Timberland, Wrangler and other apparel brands), where he was hired to develop and implement an innovation strategy. Some of the lessons he learned through that experience are described briefly below, which he generously permitted me to share.

Script the critical moves. Developing an innovation strategy and roadmap can be a daunting task, especially if the company’s innovation practices are immature. Soon described his initial stab at communicating his proposed strategy to VF’s leadership team, which consisted of over 100 PowerPoint slides (sound familiar? I think we’ve all been there.) Recognizing that it was biting off too much, he scaled back the proposal to the most critical and immediate next steps for the current year and the following year – categorized into 6 key areas. All of a sudden, 100 PPT slides became one sheet of paper – and the strategy was beginning to look much clearer and achievable. 

Shrink the change. Now looking at the strategy on one sheet of paper, the next step is to whittle it down even further. What are the most important things to accomplish this year? What about next year? Circle those on the sheet of paper. Soon landed on a “More – Better – Bigger” approach. The first year, he wanted to get more ideas, to start people thinking about what’s next and what they could do differently. The quality of the ideas wasn’t the most critical factor initially; he just wanted to motivate people to come up with lots and lots of ideas. Then, the next year, he wanted BETTER ideas, focusing more on quality rather than quantity. And the year after, he wanted BIGGER ideas – shifting from incremental ideas to adjacent and breakthrough ideas. The strategy and roadmap were now fairly well defined in clear, compelling terms.

Tweak the environment. Once the strategy and roadmap were approved, it was time to roll up the sleeves and get down to business. Focusing people’s efforts and building a culture of innovation doesn’t happen in one meeting. Soon utilized a multi-pronged approach which included bringing in outside thought leaders to talk about trends and new technologies, building a consumer insights capability, and deploying a collaboration tool for colleagues to share their learnings. In addition, he convinced his executives to establish an innovation fund to evaluate and invest in new ideas.

Soon described one of the biggest reasons new products fail as people – people who are resistant to change, who have a stake in the status quo, or who are afraid of failure or trying something new (you can call these ‘corporate antibodies’). It’s important to look for a network of change agents who are on board and want to make things happen.

It took a few years, but by the time he left VF Group, the company had built 3 global innovation centers and had funded 106 projects, 17 of which were commercialized.

I have had the privilege of working with Soon on one of our company’s innovation projects and learning from him on my own journey. This is part of my own ‘bringing the outside in’ experience.