Intro: [00:00:00] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land. It's Getting2Alpha, the show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.
Amy: I first heard about Bob Moesta through Paul Adams, the VP of Product at Intercom and early Getting2Alpha guest who's been really influential on my thinking.
So I listened to Bob's Intercom interview and then dug in and learned more about his perspective. Bob is the CEO and president of the Re-Wired Group, a consultancy specializing in demand side innovation. Bob and his team help large corporations innovate with demand side techniques and lean methods.
Meaning that he helps them validate market demand before building something. Bob and I share a mutual love of using jobs-to-be-done to innovate smarter [00:01:00] and help people ask better questions. I love his down to earth perspective and deep insights into the systemic nature of innovation derived from being on the front lines of innovation in Japan.
Bob: I think it gets back to features, especially in software. Ooh, we have to add this feature. We have to have that feature, but if you don't ask why five times to understand the underlying reason why we need the feature, my belief is you're just bloating the software. We actually let people. And what I would say is we let salespeople tell us a lot about the features we should be adding to something without actually knowing the underlying root causes of what outcomes or what problems is it really solving.
And, and to be honest, what happens, we end up over engineering it, or we end up doing it completely wrong because the consumer says, Oh, I want a calendar. And the reality is all they're really trying to do is find a space and time where they can schedule something. They don't need a calendar. They just need, where do I have time?
Way easier to make than a whole calendar program.
Amy: Listen in and learn about the key qualities and habits that lead to [00:02:00] successful innovation.
Welcome to the Getting2Alpha podcast.
Bob: God, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Amy: I'm thrilled to get a chance to hang out with you and, uh, learn more about you. To get started, let's plunge right into today. What is your work life? Like, I bet there isn't a typical day, but let's say last Thursday, last Tuesday.
What are you doing? What kind of decisions are you making? Who are you working with?
Bob: I think it's better to talk about a week than a day because I think, um, I usually work in about two hour kind of increments. And so I, I, and I, and I, I moved between so many different things. So like this week I was in Chicago and I was teaching at Northwestern.
Um, Um, and then I went into a design meeting in, uh, with a software company in Chicago, basically looking at new feature sets that they're doing in the interviews that they're doing around that in terms of jobs, interviews, came back and basically did interviews for health [00:03:00] care and home products, like putting in a new kitchen.
What causes somebody to put a new kitchen in or what's causing somebody to go to the emergency room? And so working with that and then had two board meetings around the notion of kind of strategically, where should these companies be going and having a conversation with it to having a private school come in and basically interviewing their parents to why do parents choose a private school?
And then, uh, let's see, yesterday I had a religious, uh, spiritual entrepreneurial, uh, incubator in New York city that I gave a talk to. So for the most part, I'm either teaching, I'm either doing, or I'm interacting with people kind of all the time. And so to me, it's the coolest part is the work that I do is so diverse and that it, it actually provides so much perspective for me that it's just.
I can see how one, one industry can connect to another industry because they have the same kind of approach or same fundamental problem. So it's, it's very, it's fun every day. And so to me, I'm creating either new products or helping people bring new [00:04:00] products to market or starting from nothing to basically creating something within a very, very short period of time, anywhere from one week to 90 days is the windows by which we work to create new things.
Amy: Fantastic. It sounds really stimulating.
Bob: Yeah. So it's a very small office. It used to be a little bit bigger, but I've, uh, it's, I'm not a, I'm not a terribly good manager and I don't like to manage people or, or things.
And so I, I actually have people who manage me and just kind of almost like wind me up and direct me into the right location so I can help the most. And so they, they understand how I'm wired and what I do and what I, what I'm not good at and understand how to be honest, make it fun every single day.
Amy: Wow. I want people like that.
Bob: So what are my business partners who I've had for, we've been partners for almost 17 years. I always call him my handler. Like he just knows, and he knows when to pull me out. It'll literally be in the middle of something and I'll be talking like, okay, stop talking and I'll literally just shut up, you know, cause he, I know him well enough and he knows that it's like, I have to [00:05:00] listen to something else or I mean, he's, he's, he's very, it's amazing.
It seems Greg Engel. It's great.
Amy: Fantastic. So, give us a whirlwind tour of your background. How did you get to be this person who's having these fabulous weeks and, and creating so much value in the world? How'd you first get started in the world of design and startups and entrepreneurship?
Bob: So I have to go back to when I was a little kid.
So I had three close head brain injuries when I was very young, um, mostly because I was just a stupid kid, but, and not wearing a helmet. But the reality is, is that that those injuries gave me basically, um, uh, inhibited my ability to read and to write. Um, so for the most part, I, I can't see words that are seven letters or smaller.
Um, I can't actually, uh, read out loud. Um, it's very, very difficult to, to read it all. So everything has to be read to me. And my mom basically, who is a teacher, basically realized if I was labeled very early and young, I'd be put into [00:06:00] special needs and I'd be, I would literally be, um, hindered and taken care of my whole life.
And the reality is that she wanted me to be independent. And so she taught me basically how to hack school. And so, uh, seven years old, she taught me how to lip read with the kid who mumbled next to me the test because he couldn't help himself, but he, he read a little bit out loud and I could actually figure out what the question was and what the answers were.
So I could pick the right answer. So instead of trying to cheat to copy answers, I'm literally just trying to understand how to actually get this information into my head. And so we created all these, she created all these little hacks for me to enable me to do that. And so part of it is, so I ask lots of questions.
And so the only way I would learn. And the only way I could figure things out is I had to take things apart and put them back together. And so four years old, I took apart a clock. I know I started junk, uh, what we call junk picking, which is yet I pick up old, uh, you know, TVs and high fives and stereos and, and I would take them apart and I would build new ones.
And so I started, I had my first set of speak line of speakers when I [00:07:00] was eight years old. Um, I learned how to laminate, I learned how to do all that kind of stuff, but it was all just driving around Detroit and, uh, trash picking on big trash day and then spending the time trying to figure out how to make stuff work.
The other part was that I was lucky, I would say lucky enough that I sat down next to Dr. Deming when I was 18 years old and, and asked him about a thousand questions in 10 minutes. And he looked at me and said, You know, would you be interested in being my intern for the summer? And I ended up being his intern for two summers and he took me to Japan.
Deming is the gentleman who basically went to Japan in 1952 and reinvented Japan and helped them rebuild themselves. And he's known as the quality guru or a total quality management. He's the father of lean and six sigma and all that kind of stuff. And so, um, as an 18 year old, who's an engineer. Um, who can see math equations in his head, but can't read.
He, he was intrigued with the way I ask questions. And to be honest, he was the first one to ever encourage me to ask more questions. Almost everybody else was like, oh my God, stop asking me questions. And from there, I've [00:08:00] been, uh, pretty much in product development and innovation my whole life. I started at Ford and then worked for the department of defense.
And then I did food products and. And I did a couple of startups, um, and have been kind of doing that all the way along and, uh, kind of made the choice about two, uh, about two years ago that I wanted to be a professor somewhere in, uh, by the time I'm 55, which is, um, 53. And so I'll be at Northwestern actually an adjunct in the fall.
So, um, I'm in the process of kind of pulling all my experiences and thoughts together to kind of be able to share to the world.
Amy: Wow. That's so full circle.
Bob: Try to keep it concise as I could, but there's, there's obviously a lot of fun detail in the middle of it, but I know we want to get to some other things.
Amy: Yeah. I love though, that your story starts and ends with a great teacher.
Bob: Yeah. So Clay always talks about, you know the, when the student's ready to learn, the teacher appears. And so to me, it's that notion of the, the question creates the space in the brain for solutions to fall into. And so to me, that's [00:09:00] really at the core of kind of the full circle of what I'm trying to do is help people ask better questions.
And better questions will lead to better things. But the problem is most people start with a solution and there's no question that it answers. And so that's where that to me is the fundamental difference of how I really approach innovation is that it's about the gap and creating. Where do people want to make progress and be better? Versus what solution do I have?
So to me, it's, it's at its very foundation. Innovation is about learning because if I, I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know how to do it. So how do I learn as fast as I can to actually fill that gap?
Amy: I love that. It's completely consistent, uh, with my own work and with what all my clients struggle with, which is the difference between the solution and the problem.
Bob: Yeah.
Amy: So how did you learn to approach innovation in this way? What were those pivotal experiences you had?
Bob: So I think the first one was, was really where, to be honest, I learned about [00:10:00] supply side economics and demand side economics. So the, the company I've created is called, uh, the Re-Wired group and we do demand side innovation.
And what I mean by that is that as an engineer, I was taught, I was given a system, I was given a set of resources, I was given a technology and I was basically saying, all right, how do you put this together to do better for somebody? And so I'd sit around and say, what job can my product do? And so I would go off and build things and I'd go talk to consumers and they'd tell me what they wanted and I'd go make it and you'd show it to them and they'd go like, no, that's not what I meant.
No, I don't need that. It's, it's cool, but I wouldn't use it. And so I realized that, that having a supply side view of technology is actually a problem because what happens is I can make everything better. Like a hospital can actually help people prevent heart attacks. But the reality is, is on the demand side, nobody actually believes they're going to have a heart attack.
So there's actually no market for it. And so the flip side was then to take my engineering approaches of systems and perspectives and measurement and all these different things and say, all right, let's look at the [00:11:00] consumer as a system and understand what causes them to change behavior and what are the underlying dominoes that have to fall.
And so to me, it's flipping over to the demand side and understanding basically what's causes people. To basically put it in a new kitchen. The craziest part is it's such a fundamental question that, and most people would say, what causes somebody to buy a new game, right? And they'll say, oh, it's because it's got multiplayer.
I was like, yeah, they didn't know that before they bought it. What's the moment that actually one of the dominoes have to fall say like I'm done with my old game and I'm gonna hire a new game and they speak in these words of features and benefits and all this other stuff, but it's actually not pertinent to the underlying causation of somebody's life and what's actually going on in it and how it fits in it.
And so to me, that was the kind of the big thing is I realized like demand is actually created by struggling moments and supply, whether supply is there or not, demand is actually independent of supply. And how do I actually find [00:12:00] struggling moments where people want to do something and want to do better have time and want to do something else?
Like, how do I actually find those moments and then build products and services? The service that, and so I always start with the demand side and then figure out how to flip into the supply side to actually deliver on the job.
Amy: How did your time in Japan influence your thinking?
Bob: It's probably at the core of this, because I think the notion is, is that for me, engineering in the U. S. was all about problem solving and problem sets and finding answers and being, you know, getting to the foundation of, of literally like Dr. Taguchi used to call whack a mole, we'd solve one problem and create another problem.
In Japan, They really focused on kind of the underlying functionality of things and measuring how well something functioned and being able to build things that were robust to noise factors, things they couldn't actually control.
And so this aspect of instead of finding the root cause and say, the [00:13:00] temperature of the plant is causing this problem with this product. It's like, how do I actually design the product to be robust to the temperature of the plant? And you started to realize that all of a sudden, this notion of what a system is and what a function is, is just at the core, kind of like something, it's almost a different language.
And for me, it's, to be honest, it's one of the things I still struggle with today, is trying to articulate that, those learnings that I had in Japan around function and variation, and like, the notion of all problems are problems of variation. And then stuffing everything through that little hole actually enables me to see things that other people can't see.
And an example I would say is that at some point, like, if you're trying to make something, if it's too thin, it breaks. And if it's too thick, it's basically too heavy and it doesn't work. And so what would happen is we'll usually solve one problem and create another problem on the other side. And so usually most problems we have are two sided.
They're never one sided problems. And so being able to [00:14:00] understand that all problems are problems of variation enables you to hone in on what's really essential and then actually focus on it and it saves time. So ultimately I was, I came back from Japan and when I worked at Ford, I could solve problems.
In half a quarter, 10 percent of the time of other people, they give me more and more complicated problems and there was never a problem I couldn't solve because I would literally go through, I will, I always call it simplicity on the other side of complexity to get to the essence of the functions of things.
And it was really, really powerful. So like that, that is that I think at the core of my experiences.
Amy: How does this perspective link with job stories and jobs-to-be-done? Draw those, draw those lines for us.
Bob: So jobs-to-be-done is really, at its foundation is, like I said, uh, looking at the consumer as a system and understanding the, the, the underlying human energy that causes somebody to say, today's the day I need a new mattress.
The biggest problem to [00:15:00] me is the way that I was taught here in the U S is we were taught about, it's a probability it's random. It's just random. Somebody picks up a, you know, but if I, if I know your age and I know your zip code, but I know your income, like this is where you might be to buy, to buy a mattress, or if you have this age and this income and this education level, you'll buy this car, but it doesn't cause anything.
And so, ultimately, it's looking back at underlying causality, cause and effect, and the progress that people are trying to make. And in some cases, you could say it's the pro, it's the combination that progress to me is the combination of the problem that I have.
And the outcome that I want and the two together actually build two sides of the thing that the other part to me is though most people assume symmetry if I have this problem that I want this outcome but the reality is is in the real world people are irrational and what happens is the irrational becomes rational with context.
And so as I add the new factors and variables, the noise factors wrapped around it, I can actually start to see what causes [00:16:00] people to basically say today's the day, you know, I'm finally going to get a new mattress or buy it, buy a new car or to buy a new game. And so it's this, this aspect of seeing people as an equation and seeing behavior as an equation and realizing that.
It's more about space, it's people through space and time, and it's not people centric, it's actually, it's progress centric. So you might last week have wanted to be in job one, but now next week you might be actually in job three. And so it's not a people thing, it's a situation and an outcome thing. Am I making any sense by the way?
Amy: Oh, not only are you making sense, when you get your hands on my game thinking framework, I just wrote a book. It's built around this and it's progress. Yeah. And it's exactly what you're talking about. So like, yes, progress over time, people in space and time, motivation and context.
Bob: Yeah. Motivation and context.
Amy: Not demographics.
Bob: So here's the thing is that ultimately to me, this goes back to one, so I have this [00:17:00] notion of the five disciplines of an innovator, right? And one of them is about value. And the aspect is, is that context creates value. If I, if you, you know, yes, people, do you like steak or do you like pizza?
And people, most people say, I like both. I said, great. Tell me about the last time you had steak and say, Oh, this was going on. That was going on. I'm like, all right, if I take the steak out, I put pizza in it. Does it work? And it's like, Oh, not so much. I'm like, okay. And I take, and I take the steak and put it in the pizza situation.
Oh, that doesn't work at all. And so all of a sudden you start to realize like people keep thinking the product. Is what adds the value. And the reality is it's the consumer that adds the value because they know when to use it, where to use it. And there's, and it's them actually figuring it out. So it's not the product it's the, it's their solution that it's the ultimate of having the outcome they're seeking that gives them satisfaction.
Amy: I love it.
Bob: So let me just add one thing to that, because I think it gets back to feature, especially in software. Oh, we have to add this feature. We have to have that feature. But if you don't ask why five times to understand the underlying reason why we need the feature, my belief is you're just bloating the [00:18:00] software.
We actually let people, and what I would say is we let salespeople tell us a lot about the features we should be adding to something without actually knowing the underlying root causes of what outcomes or what problems is it really solving. And, and to be honest, what happens, we end up over engineering it or we end up doing it completely wrong because the consumer says, Oh, I want a calendar.
And the reality is all they're really trying to do is find a space and time where they can schedule something. They don't need a calendar. They just need, where do I have time? Way easier to make than a whole calendaring program.
Amy: So this is related to thinking in systems, not features.
Bob: Oh, for sure, for sure.
Well, here's the other part though, is some people think about systems as components. I have a cap and I have a bottle. What's the best bottle? What's the best cap? I can't tell you. But if I talk about the functions of the bottle, which is to contain and to seal, right? And to be able to pour. And all of a sudden, so it's systems with a, with a, with verbs as opposed to systems with nouns.
Amy: [00:19:00] Great. Yeah. I mean. I come from game design and game design is all about systems with verbs.
Bob: Yeah, that's right.
Amy: And what I learned was that games are about three to five years ahead of the rest of the industry in graphics, in AI, in UX, et cetera, et cetera. You see this trickle down effect. So, you know, this is the way game designers design is.
You have to, if you're going to make something that's compelling over time. But I love the way you frame it. With, you know, things people can really understand, but the difference between throwing features at something and evolving the underlying system is a theme in many of these conversations on this podcast.
And so the fact that you're bringing this up from your perspective, working with the companies she's worked with is incredibly exciting because it's such a deep insight.
Bob: Can I give a real world example? The whole aspect is in health and healthcare, right? And people are advertising wait [00:20:00] time. If I'm sick, I've had it before.
Let's say it's a sinus infection. I know what it is. I just need this script. Wait time doesn't mean anything. It's done time that's more important to them. The other part is, is let's say I have a lot of chronic issues and I have a sinus infection. This is job number two. And it's like, I'm, I'm worried because if you, if I go somewhere else and they give me the wrong thing and it's not the right thing, I need to know how it interacts with everything else I have going on.
So I'm actually willing to wait to see the right person, to make sure that I don't get, it, this doesn't make me sicker, right? And so there's two completely different jobs that are going on here. And both of them are like, Oh yeah, the wait time is 10 minutes. It means nothing to them. Right? It's the whole aspect is, is when will you see me?
And so the thing is, is they've boiled the wrong metric down to actually reducing wait time. So this is the crazy part. When you talk to people, it says that when wait time is zero, it must not be a really good place.
Amy: Oh man, yeah. So finding the right metric to [00:21:00] focus on is pretty tricky and having a strong methodology to do that is very valuable.
Bob: That's right. That's the point. And that, that you can add features, but the features don't do it if you have the wrong metrics.
Amy: Right. So is this a common mistake that you see people make?
Bob: So here's the thing is I, I don't think in that way. Like, I don't think of like people making a mistake because I, like, I, I, again, I think in this notion of progress.
And so if I look at where people have been coming from and where they're going to, it's a common place they have to be in order to actually value what I do. But if you, if you start, if, to be honest, if you have never done any kind of innovation before you're starting blank. The reality is, is, is what I would say is the thinking that we're talking about is sometimes just too hard for people to say, like, Oh, you're overthinking it, you're just not thinking about, so they have to go through this notion of features and problems and that whole space to realize, and to be honest, it gets you far, but it doesn't get you farther.[00:22:00]
And so to me, it's, it's more of this, it's not a mistake. It's the fact this is like, at some point I that's how I actually, I would say, I judge whether they're ready to value what I'm talking about or not.
Amy: So it's calibration.
Bob: It is a calibration. And then, and it's, it's, it's the evolution of an innovator, right?
At some point I did features and benefits too. And I did, I did all that stuff. And it's like, and in my belief is if you try to actually. eliminate that. I actually don't understand the value of it. I need the value of features and benefits limiting out on me to basically value now the extra work I have to do to figure out the jobs because the jobs is more work.
It is slower in some cases, but then it actually speeds you up.
Amy: So how do you go about figuring out the jobs? What's, you know, at a high level, what's your process, what's your process?
Bob: So the process itself is, is based on, for me, the foundations are on criminal and intelligence interrogation and the aspect that, that I can't ask the consumer about what they want.
Cause they actually don't know. And that they, I [00:23:00] don't understand that they don't even know what's possible. And that, you know, Deming would always say that the innovation is the responsibility of the producer, not the consumer. And so I talked to people who have recently struggled and have bought and made progress.
In something in the area of we want to talk about so my thing is if you're designing a new game and the game doesn't exist, what I would do is I'm going to go like I just want to go talk to, you know, 10 people who recently switched games they were way into this game, and then they dropped it and they moved into this other game.
And they love it or they hate it. Right. It doesn't matter to me. And what I really want to know is like, what was going on with the old game that finally said, yep, that's enough. Yeah, I can't do that. Is it, is it friends change? Is it the fact that you're going into new groups? It's the fact that you got ostracized.
Is it the fact that you, like, um, you, you, you mastered it and hit the top level. Um, you, you do it by yourself. You're doing it with others. Like there's, there's all these variables that are involved in it. And then. What's the outcome of how, like, so when you finally decide you're going to get rid of this game, how do you choose the [00:24:00] next game?
And do you, do you choose it by who you hear or do you actually play demos? Or do you like, most people say they shop for things. And my belief is, is when you really, when you interrogate people, they just lie about it. Like, oh yeah, I look, I got, I got four quotes for that thing. I'm like, so what were the four quotes?
Well, I talked to four people. I'm like, well, did you really talk to, and all of a sudden he's like, well, Really, I only talked to one, and once I was convinced, I called one other person, and they told me a number, and I let, and I just didn't, you know, and so they rationalized these things, and so you have to interrogate way past it.
And so, in doing that, we get something called the pushes, when, the context, when I'm in this situation, and the, uh, and the pulls, which are the outcomes, which is, so I can do something. And then there's anxieties, which are the questions that they have as they're looking at the game. And then there's the habits, the things they have to give up in order to get to that next game.
And so we, we interviewed those people that way, and we just hear their stories and we let their let, there's no question. I don't have a list of questions or anything. It literally is built around the forces of progress and the timeline. [00:25:00] Um, framework and then from there we do each one individually and then we look for the patterns and we say which stories are similar and we abstracted up to a level where we can actually build a specification of like when people are in this situation and this is going on.
They want to move to this kind of game for this reason versus other people who are in this context and want this they actually looking for this and so we can see that. Here are the three different jobs that we actually have to design to I've taken the process from a 90 day process to a one week process.
We do it as a sprint. We do 10 interviews in two days. We do analysis Wednesday. We do detailing on Thursday and we do set up the prototyping for Friday. I do that pretty much every week or every other week. I have a team here working on that.
Amy: What form of prototyping do you do? How, what, what level of fidelity?
Bob: All right. So this is actually a really big topic for me because I think that the notion of prototyping can be anywhere from as conceptual in terms of block diagramming to physically go building to actually [00:26:00] going and selling. So for example, now that we might know a job, it might be that I go to the grocery store and buy 14 or 15 other products that are similar to things that might fit.
And I might actually go prototype with things that are in the market so I can get better resolution. I might actually go design and build focus prototypes around one aspect of the job. And so part of this is then detailing the job in terms of what's the sequencing of things and what happens and how do we do it.
And so we might end up building streams of prototyping. So to me, there are different roles that prototypes take and there's different fidelities that they take. And part of it is, is doing this as fast as possible and figuring out how to do what I would call parallel work and then do integration work.
And so it's the divergent convergent piece. Is another thing I learned in Japan where in the U. S. we would, we would design an engine and I couldn't design the transmission till the transmission was done. One of the things I learned how to do was basically how do I actually design and develop the engine and transmission in parallel.
And so the project that I was on at Ford was to [00:27:00] take us from 72 months of development time to 36 months. And so it's all about being able to understand how to prototype at different levels at different times. So I will be doing business model prototyping while I'm actually doing a UI interface prototyping.
Amy: That's fantastic.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.