THE INNOVATOR MINDSET - TO BE CONTINUED

QR codes, those Rorschach test-like images you find everywhere from business cards to signs on a jogging trail to tombstones (yes, it’s a thing), have been around since the early 2000s. Yes, they even predated smartphones.

Self-ordering kiosks, those boxy things that can resemble anything from a Southwest Airlines boarding group pylon to a towering monolith embedded with an iPad, have been around for nearly a decade. Possibly even big metal pylons found in Utah.

Delivery has also been around for as long as there have been pizza and Chinese food restaurants. Even the addition of the gig element has been at least around for a decade.

The above have been some of the latest industry newsmakers, heralding the innovations that airports and airport food and retail operators have implemented in their environments, primarily in response to the pandemic. You can almost equate it to an innovation renaissance. Sort of.

While such work is commendable--because adoption in this space can often come at the speed of a teenager rising out of bed on a weekend--I can’t help but think that, as of late, it has been more like a teenager suddenly faced with a project that they’ve been aware of for months and now has to put something together quickly. 

The difference in our real life airport scenario is that the implementers have done an exceptional job whereas your teenager slapping together a project is likely to get a grade that reflects the effort divided by the time subtracted by the sum value of disappointed parents.

The rapid impact of COVID and the exceedingly more rapid fall of passenger traffic forced all to adopt. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

For retailers and restaurateurs, it didn’t mean tossing out the old playbook but adding pages of new plays.

People want to social distance. People want to quickly pay for things. In extreme cases, people don’t want to deal with other people. These are our new normals.

We got it into our heads that we needed to innovate, shift, pivot.

Then comes the question of why we needed a seismic event to push us in that direction? To resurrect the teenager analogy, why do we have to wait for mom to explode before we decide to put away the clothes or empty the dishwasher?

There are a number of reasons for why there is a lag between what you see on the street versus in the airport. At one time food and retail contracts were about 20 years (or even longer if they were given extension upon extension upon extension) resulting in concession programs featuring brands that might have outlived their useful life. Or, you would have brands whose relevance expired simply because from the time they partnered with a firm to bid on a package to the time that they opened. They were so two thousand and late.

But for innovation? It could be cost/benefit, rules and regulations, or, simply, trepidation.

Like most industries, airports are historically a bit of a copycat league and not necessarily driven by first mover advantage. I will say, though, that in the last few years it has been slowly changing. We are much happier to see how the initiative first plays out in someone else’s backyard before taking it into our own. Let’s just say that nobody wants to be the canary in the coal mine. 

If it isn’t trepidation, then perhaps it’s mindset.

The true test and reasoning for this piece isn’t to call attention to what is being done now but to see how this mindset carries onward in the “After After”, as I like to call it. Do these efforts continue to build upon what has been started or do we slowly revert back to our old habits?

So is all this effort a fad or a trend? Short-term or long-term?  

The above detour is just one long, circuitous analogy to say that behavior and mindset will change provided the triggering event is significant enough. And the more pronounced the event, the more deeply set these changes will be. Can there be a greater trigger than an unprecedented, far-reaching pandemic that has decimated many businesses in many industries? 

It will no longer be enough for stakeholders to just wait for the product makers or efficiency experts to approach them with a widget that will make x-problem go away by applying x-product. There needs to be a different kind of algebra. There needs to be a true effort on the demand side to work in concert with the supply side. 

How?

Either you add an ‘innovation’ expert to the team or you shift the collective team mindset. 

THE INNOVATION EXPERT

In a Pre-Pandemic era we had titles such as Director of Customer Service, Head of Customer Engagement, Vice President of Customer Experience, and Director of Aura. That last one is for real.

The aforementioned and their many derivatives dotted many an org chart because we needed someone to truly take the lead in making sure that travelers were cared for. And we had that luxury. We had record passenger traffic, carriers were flying everywhere, and airports were doing well. It was as happy and gleeful as children at a Disney theme park wearing their expensive merchandise and eating an oversized turkey leg whilst taking a picture with a costumed character.

Yes, I said, “whilst”.

Having someone solely dedicated to pushing the ‘innovation’ initiative to work across all departments is surely an option. They will not only identify pain points in the passenger journey but will be the source to funnel the many proposed innovations companies will be throwing his or her way. Also, this frees the rest of the group to solely focus on their own responsibilities.

In a 2018 blog post, Michael Putz, founder and managing partner of LEAD Innovation, succinctly explains the role of this ‘innovation’ position as to not just be an innovator but to be an innovation enabler. Per Putz, an enabler is an idea finder, idea manager, innovation scout, innovation strategist and more. They simply run reconnaissance, forage for ideas to bring back to the tribe. Putz provides great detail on the job description that airports and operators will be placing in their job ads.

These people certainly don’t just grow on trees. There isn’t necessarily a degree or designation for innovation. Sometimes it’s a deep interest or side hustle that shifts them further and further into looking at how to truly make things better. Sometimes, it’s simply someone evolves their thinking and vision.

THE MINDSET SHIFT

The book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein is a collection of historical examples reinforcing the approach of how a generalist’s breadth of skills triumph over a specialist’s depth of skills. I highly recommend getting a copy.

What I have extracted from the book is that the skills we possess and the mindsets we adopt need to be broader in scope in order to survive because, well, the old way of doing things won’t cut it. And when you throw in the harrowing turns, vertigo-inducing spins, and precipitous drops of a pandemic rollercoaster, your skills need to be greater than a stomach of steel to get you through. 

Simply, teams will need to be cured of the, “We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way” mantra that has held back many organizations. That approach was fine when things were great. 

When you’re out in the ocean and you're reeling in tuna after tuna after tuna, all is well in the world. But when nothing is biting, you need to re-think things and try different approaches. It’s why the former is called catching, while the latter is called fishing.

There is nothing wrong with resorting to the tried and true, but what we’ve seen is that there will be moments that will require more, different, or both. It’s these instances that tend to expose weaknesses and gaps both in plans and in people.

There is a saying, “If all you’ve ever known is a hammer, then all you ever see are nails.”

I have no doubt that many teams are staffed with diversely-skilled professionals who would not have risen to such a level if they were not in any way talented and/or have been shaped by events from the seemingly unthinkable (9/11), tumultuous (spikes of natural disasters), or insurmountable (the most recent recession). But COVID is the ultimate boss at the end of a video game who seemingly has no weakness. As an old gamer, I would be defeated many, many times having applied many, many different strategies until something clicked.

So throwing every kitchen sink idea or solution you’ve ever come across in your career isn’t a bad thing. We will naturally fall back on what we know. But eventually, you run out of ammunition and will need to get--creative.

The reasoning in Range isn’t just that a generalist is greater than the specialist. I make mention of this because the many cases that the book presents is how many types of skills can solve a problem, not just the solitary skill that was designed to solve that problem. The book also presents that the collective team, not just one person, could make an impact.

INNOVATION IS HAPPENING

You’re seeing seeds of such work now. 

Pittsburgh International Airport has been using robots that cast intense ultraviolet light to augment the cleaning efforts that keep travelers and staffs safe. In fact, they’ve gone one step further and have created their own innovation center.

Kudos to PIT CEO Christina Cassotis and her team for having the foresight to work with homegrown talent in a growing tech hub such as Pittsburgh. During her tenure at PIT, Cassotis has done all sort of work to elevate the experience at her airport. She's my spirit animal.

Rick Belliotti is the director of innovation and customer experience design for San Diego International Airport. It’s a cool title that you’d think would be laser etched on a thin piece of metal that he hands out as his business card. But what’s most interesting is that Rick oversees the airport’s Innovation Lab. They recently welcomed the fifth group to the program. Though this recent cohort of companies is relevantly focused on navigating the pandemic world, previous participants were aimed at elevating the passenger experience. Note that an early Innovation Lab graduate was food delivery group At Your Gate, who, alongside Servy, have expanded order and delivery services to those traveling through Boston Logan International Airport and others.

Speaking of At Your Gate...they’ve got robots! 

Robots, in the vein of the ones in The Jetsons, aren’t that far away. At Your Gate has been testing a delivery robot and I have to say it’s both pretty cool and very promising. From videos that I have seen, it’s not fully autonomous as of yet. Tests seem to simply follow a person around rather obediently, somewhere between a loyal dog and a stage five clinger. It’s promising and it’s a start.

Retailer Hudson recently announced that it will be opening its latest concept, Hudson Nonstop, at Dallas Love Field. This concept will feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and will enable customers to walk in, grab what they want, and automatically paying for their purchases as they walk out of the unit with nary an interaction with a human. Hudson was not the first (that title goes to OTG) but it certainly will not be the last.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So why not just have an innovation expert?

Of the two options, having someone designated for this position with this responsibility is the easiest. Shifting a mindset is going to be hard work. But of the two, a mindset shift has the greater payoff.

I would rather have an innovator community than an innovator island. I’d prefer an organizational mindset because inspiration can come from anywhere and from anyone. The mindset contributes to the culture and sets an expectation, “Hey we think differently and outwardly here.”

Besides, a community mindset is a safeguard against a departure. Or, as we’ve seen in the last year, a re-organizing or downsizing. Does that skill leave? Not if it’s baked into an organization’s DNA.

The work comes not in identifying what is “innovative” but orienting the minds to identify what can be elevated and improved upon. It starts with curiosity. It continues with a vision. Ultimately, it ends with implementation.

I noted that it would have to be the collective mindset for such innovation. I would venture to guess that a long-term benefit is it would also contribute towards a collective push moving the industry forward.

Despite what I was told last year when the pandemic was grounding the entire country to a near standstill, creativity is certainly needed now more than ever. Innovative thinking will continue into post-COVID.

Think different.

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This is meant to be a thought provoker and a conversation starter.