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It's one of the underappreciated skills required by an innovator - they have to be able to convince lots of people to do things that might not be fully rational (invest in the company, join something that is likely to fail, try a product they've never seen before), and if you can't tell a good story it is just very hard to make that happen.

Scott D. Anthony

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Scott D. Anthony
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: February 22
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More quotes by Scott D. Anthony

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Good innovators are careful observers, network extensively, run experiments, ask lots of questions, and find ways to bring diverse ideas together. Overarching all of this is an intrinsic interest in working through puzzles.
Scott D. Anthony
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Everyone knows innovation involves developing unique understanding of a market, thinking expansively to develop a solution, and then finding a way to test rigorously and adapt quickly.
Scott D. Anthony
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If you are trying to improve the performance of existing operations in known markets, it is an analytical problem where it's just a question of aligning your execution engine in the right way. If it is about creating something new and different, you can't derive the right answer analytically.
Scott D. Anthony
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If you are a large company and you want to do something unique, you almost by definition have to tap onto the core business in some way. Otherwise you are going into a naked fight against startups, and that's just a tough place to be.
Scott D. Anthony
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One of the biggest mistakes large companies make is creating innovation teams that mirror all the functions of the core business. Those teams make no progress because they spent forever updating each other on what they are doing versus really crushing the most critical problems they need to address.
Scott D. Anthony
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Make sure that you take the time to think about how other companies might respond to your idea, both those companies already in the market you plan to target as well as others that might imagine targeting that market.
Scott D. Anthony
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Have a core concept, but wrap it in a full business model.
Scott D. Anthony
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People who live in more than two countries are more successful innovators.
Scott D. Anthony
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Think about how much it costs to learn more. Sometimes you want to build confidence by knocking off the easy things.
Scott D. Anthony
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Teams working on disruptive ideas need to be small enough that they can be fed by no more than two pizzas.
Scott D. Anthony
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The most important thing here is to largely ignore what customers say, and instead watch what they do or track where they spend money.
Scott D. Anthony
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People who copy what exists copy a point-in-time artifact, and if you are managing the process correctly you are already hard at work on the next thing.
Scott D. Anthony
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So many people tell me that they aren't creative or they aren't innovative, and it's just not true.
Scott D. Anthony
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I have a fear right now that what I call the advertising-narcissism complex is sucking up way too much top talent.
Scott D. Anthony
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Good innovators like to solve business crossword puzzles.
Scott D. Anthony
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I find social media as fun and engaging as the next person, but imagine if all the creative talent that was pouring into finding increasingly clever ways for us to broadcast daily banality (and then serve ads based on what is learned) instead focused on some of the UN Millennium goals? The world would be a better place.
Scott D. Anthony
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Companies get into grooves and they keep sharpening what they are doing, when in fact what they really need to do sometimes is to stop and do something completely differently.
Scott D. Anthony
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We've got some great big problems in our world. We have to figure out how to feed 10 billion people. Too many people can't access clean water, quality healthcare, and reasonable education. We have to figure out what to do about climate change, income inequality, and more. Innovators need to rise to the challenge!
Scott D. Anthony
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A spreadsheet for an innovative idea reports the mathematical relationship between made up numbers. You can't cash a spreadsheet.
Scott D. Anthony
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It would be fun too to put some of the great philosophers and political scientists of the past couple centuries into a time machine, have them look at the world today, and see what they think. Imagine Schumpeter, Malthus, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Marx, and more! That would be good fun.
Scott D. Anthony