Inspiring Innovation: My Experience, Reflections and Toolkit

Innovation lies in the core of any entrepreneur’s success. As I continue to reflect on my professional path, I’d like to dive into my formative early years and share a couple of powerful tools that have helped myself and my team navigate fintech innovation.

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Pivotal revelations

About 20 years ago, I entered the world of commercial finance. In this young industry, I witnessed how cutting-edge solutions bridged the gap between production and sale, accelerating business operations and enhancing the overall economic efficiency. It was especially a profound realization for me, seeing firsthand how financial services silently underpin our daily lives.

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Later, I joined an online retail trading company. During this time, I gained another vantage point: the interaction between global corporations and the everyday lives of individuals. This stage of my career was pivotal because it allowed me to grasp the connections between different parties in the economy. Witnessing all the innovations and opportunities emerging around my everyday work, I started to build my own toolkit for innovation, which has been proven very helpful throughout my entrepreneurial journey, and I’d like to share the most important ones with you.

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Inspiration from The Medici Effect

I highly recommend reading The Medici Effect , a timeless book about the transformative power of cross-disciplinary innovation. Drawing inspiration from the influential Medici family of the Italian Renaissance, the author illustrates how their patronage brought together talented people in numerous fields and inadvertently sparked innovation from there.

Translating it into my own words, it’s vital to embrace diverse perspectives. I believe the book echoes the belief that cross-industry collaborations often lead to the creation of great products. This is why the YouHodler team actively explores partnership opportunities with companies across various industries, and learns from them as we work together.

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Design Thinking as a practical framework to go from zero to a working prototype

If you are looking for an efficient framework that can help you go in a structured way from identifying the problem or a need to a working prototype, take a look at the Design thinking methodology.

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While Wiki defines Design thinking as a set of cognitive , strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing , this goes far beyond visual design. The methodology covers all steps from ideation to the implementation of the product. I was personally inspired by working with Suzanne Alexandra, former UX and product designer of Motorola, Apple, Charles Schwab and Google. During a series of workshops, she navigated us through all the stages of the technique:

●????? Empathize: research your users' needs.

●????? Define: state your users' needs and problems.

●????? Ideate: challenge assumptions and create ideas.

●????? Prototype: start to create solutions.

●????? Test: try your solutions out.

Let me illustrate one of the stages, ideation. Here’s an interesting trick I learned from Suzanne: if you have already found your users’ needs and you need to create ideas, try to think this way:

1. How would I solve it if I had all the money in the world (unlimited budget)?
2. How would I do it if I had a magic stick (no limits from the laws of physics, for example)?
3. And finally, how can I optimize my ideas from #1 and #2 in order to make them fit into the real world?

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My go-to innovation methodology: The Innovation Genome

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The Innovation Genome was created by our friend Bill O’Connor and his team during his time with AutoDesk. By analyzing nature, as well as the principles and logic behind mankind’s major innovations, Bill’s team tried to find an “Innovation DNA.” The result of this project was a set of truly timeless principles that world-changing innovators have been using for thousands of years. On a side note, Bill is currently working on the Nobel Innovation project, analyzing and identifying patterns behind the journey of Nobel laureates.

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It’s a solid framework for the innovation process, which has been guiding me through my entrepreneurial journey. I encourage every fellow entrepreneur to learn more details by watching at least this short video or? this post by Peter Fisk , but below you can find a quick summary of how it works:

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Essentially, The Innovation Genome framework guides the transition from conception to execution of innovative ideas, in five stages:

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●????? Stage 1: Visualize the Innovation Environment. This is the homework that prepares you for success. You start by assessing the current situation of your project, and from there, setting the stage for the innovation process.

●????? Stage 2: Develop an Innovation Target. This stage is about identifying a problem that you need to fix, or catching an opportunity from what you see.

●????? Stage 3: Generate Innovation Ideas. The framework provides seven “Essential Innovation Questions” to help examine everything in your plan. ??

●????? Stage 4: Create Innovation Prioritization. This involves sifting through the generated ideas and gauging them against two criteria: their potential impact (“wild”) and the feasibility of implementation (“worldly”). This step ensures that the most promising ideas are identified and readied for the next phase.

●????? Stage 5: Execute Projects. In this stage, there’s a seven-step execution plan with straightforward action items, setting the course for successful innovation.

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Let me dive a bit deeper again into the Ideation stage. Given a problem to be solved, there are seven essential innovation questions:

●????? What could we look at in a new way?

●????? What could we use in a new way or for the first time?

●????? What could we move, changing its position in space or time?

●????? What could we interconnect, for the first time or in a new way?

●????? What could we alter in terms of design and performance?

●????? What can we make that is truly new?

●????? What can we imagine that would create a great experience for someone?

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An easy way to remember these questions is to use the acronym LUMIAMI for Look, Use, Move, Interconnect, Alter, Make, and Imagine (there is an old joke that this technique was created by the guy Lu from Miami). In the event that you need even more ideas, you can add a practical extension to the existing questions.

This framework provides a structured yet flexible approach to innovation. At YouHodler, we have used it as a guide in many projects to foster ideas, evaluate them, and translate the best ones into actionable projects within the dynamic space of Web3 fintech.

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Build Your Own Toolkit for Innovation

Innovation is not merely an occasional spark but a continuous flame. We are built upon it. I hope that by sharing my experiences and the tools that have shaped my path, I can inspire others to embark on their own journeys of innovation and build their own toolkit.

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Regardless of your industry or job title, cultivating a toolkit for success and innovation is invaluable. Think of it as a mental gym where you exercise your creativity, agility, and strategic muscles daily. Begin this practice as early as you can in your career, and the benefits will compound spectacularly over time. And keep this in mind: the process of learning, experimenting, and iterating is not just about making products or services; it's about building your legacy of transformative thinking that can influence your personality, your team, and your industry.