Total Innovation Podcast

2. Kyle Basler-Reeder, ExxonMobil - How to Unlock the Power of the Global Crowd - Part 1

• Wazoku Team • Season 1 • Episode 2

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This podcast over two parts digs into how Kyle designed, built, and now leads ExxonMobil's corporate wide open innovation program, building a high impact capability from a standing start in less than eighteen months, helping teams across the company to solve some of the most challenging problems and explore new opportunity generation strategies, leveraging external resources. This innovative approach is highlighted in Wazoku's article, showcasing the strategic implementation and success of the program. In the first episode, we dig into the background and foundations for success. In part two, we dig into lessons learned, scaling, and so much more.

Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops. 

Connect with Simon and Kyle on LinkedIn:

Simon Hill, CEO & founder, Wazoku
Kyle Basler- Reeder, Open Innovation Leader, Exxon Mobil

Simon Hill:

Welcome to Total Innovation, the podcast where we explore the different aspects of innovation, transformation, and change. From the disruptive minds of startup founders to the strategic meeting rooms of global giants and the thought leaders shaping the future, we bring you the stories of change makers. Each episode promises a fresh perspective from both sides of the mic. We embrace the diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, and experiences that drive corporate renewal and evolution. The Total Innovation journey will take us through the challenges, the victories, and the lessons learned in the ever evolving landscape of innovation. Join us as we explore the narratives of those shaping the market, those writing about it, and those doing the hard work. This is Total Innovation, where every voice counts, and every story matters. This podcast is brought to you by Wazoku, helping to change the world one idea at a time. Today we're joined by Kyle Basler Reeder from ExxonMobil. As you'll hear shortly from Kyle, his journey to open innovation began as an exploration geophysicist. Pretty cool. This podcast, over two parts, digs into how Kyle designed, built and now leads ExxonMobil's corporate wide open innovation program. Building a high impact capability from a standing start in less than 18 months, helping teams across the company to solve some of the most challenging problems and explore new opportunity generation strategies, leveraging external resources. In the first episode, we dig into the background and foundations for success. In part two, we dig into lessons learned, scaling, and so much more. So. Without further ado, let's start first of all with a bit of background and a bit of motivation. Can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself, your personal journey and the role that led you to this, you know, this thing from geo from exploration geophysicist to open innovation guru?

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

Yeah, well, thank you, Simon, for the warm introduction. My pleasure to be here as well. Really excited to connect with your community. Yeah, I would say my journey, it's, uh, it's been a windy one, uh, exploring various activities. I do find that other open innovation leaders, I do find they often have these windy paths, so I don't think I'm alone, but Yeah, my journey started at ExxonMobil, exploration geophysicist, as you said. That, that's basically a fancy way of saying, I, I built 3D models of the earth. I helped people, uh, look for where to drill wells, where to discover, uh, new hydrocarbon deposits. And then after we've discovered them, how are we going to produce those? Where are we going to put all the wells? How many wells do we need? Et cetera. So started really in that space. Had a, a good run there, you know, five years of sort of various technical assignments. I had a business assignment, got to learn about, uh, you know, uh, natural gas, uh, various types of things. And, and then what happened is I started on these sort of broadening assignments, if you will. The first one was a machine learning research role for a year. Uh, so AI, you know, that's something that I studied in my, uh, master's thesis and kind of picked back up on that. Did some imaging work for a year, you know, did some other types of stuff. And then, and then what happened is we had an opportunity that came. In ExxonMobil, there was a recognition, uh, that we needed to be more externally leveraged. We needed to get out there. It's a big world. There's a lot of capability out there. And at the time, this was something that some teams did really well, other teams not so much. And every team had a different tool they liked to use, whether it was working with vendors, maybe labs, academics, etc. So what they did is they decided to make a full time position. That was about three years ago, roughly, two and a half years ago. That position was called external leveraging coordinator. That's how I got started in open innovation. And I got to tell you, it was a bit of a shock for me again, with this very technical background. Sort of saying, why me? Okay. This is interesting. Well, it turns out that I think that background actually paid off. So when I came into the role really was trying to get oriented, what are we trying to do here? I conducted a lot of interviews. I talked to about 200 people, 150 or so inside. And I also started talking to people outside the company. And from that role, I developed some guidelines on three things. You know, what are the types of things we should take outside? What are the types of things that you should do for those activities? So if you go outside, should we go to a lab? Should we go to a vendor? You know, who should we be talking to? Who should help us? And then for each one of those, I put together some tips, tricks, guidelines. So that was kind of the, the front, the front end of this thing. Open innovation comes online about a year and a half ago, as you said, that's a bit of a different ball game. I think we're going to unpack that more in this call, but that, that's a little bit of the preface on how, how I got to this assignment.

Simon Hill:

That journey from, from, you know, exploration geophysicists through to there is. You're right, there is no regular pathway for some of these things, right? And I think there's an element of personal motivation and personal intrigue as you start to unpack what is this open innovation capability. I know from some of our previous conversations that that curiosity definitely piqued you. But what was that sort of personal inspiration and motivation? That led to choose this pathway. Cause I'm sure that there was a, you know, there's a fork in the road and opportunity opens up and you're choosing something and it's quite a different thing than you'd been doing, right. Cause it's very hands on the work that you were doing, like projects and applied. And now you're going into building a capability for the organization. I like it so much, much, maybe you didn't even think about it like that at the start, or maybe you did, but what was that personal motivation that piqued your interest to think, huh, yeah, this is a, this is an area to come spend a few years of building skills and expertise.

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

That's a great question. There's two things that come to mind. One is if we go back in time, I was in that imaging assignment. I'm in the research company. Uh, we did this sort of innovation program, if you will. And in that program, it's the standard idea box sort of thing. Give me your ideas. You know, they, they pick the best ideas. You pitch them to the management management picks a few of them. You know, I think about seven of them and I was one of those, you know, us projects. Okay. So I did this kind of innovation project. That was the first time that I learned innovation. Is this, is like a science. This isn't just new ideas. This is an invention. There's a whole science to it. There's a process that was really a game changer for me. I delved into it that, you know, the quote at the end of that first project was Kyle, you've set the gold standard for innovation at ExxonMobil. So I really just delved in, I was passionate about it. Later on, we did another idea box thing. This time I had a, I had a kind of an out there idea. I basically said, we have this technology that we use. I said, why don't we use that technology in, uh, this, uh, other company's software? And they were kind of wondering, you know, what, what are you talking about? We're going to give our, one of our imaging softwares to this other company that does voice communication. It was really this out there thing. And there were a few conversations that came from that. They said, look, your idea, it's kind of interesting, but what's more interesting is this mindset that you had of taking some of our technology off the shelf and, and farming it out to these other companies. Um, so that those were some of the seeds where I think I kind of got started the next year, I was a senior mentor on this innovation program. And, and, and then I got to sort of some mastery because now I'm coaching other people. So I think that's a part of the reason why I was chosen for the job. Those two kind of inklings that, Hey, this guy, he's kind of interested in innovation and he's also, he's thinking externally in these new ways that we're not thinking about.

Simon Hill:

So internal innovation led to the birth of open innovation. There you go. That's exactly right. Interesting journey. And I guess you got the bug a little bit at that point in time as well. And I know you've gone out and spoken to a lot of different, um, practitioners and, you know, and from different industries as you've gone, gone through this. Could you just step back from that a little bit and talk to us about, um, so what is, what is, what is open innovation at ExxonMobil? Like, what is it, what is it that you started to create?

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

I'm really glad you asked me that question because I think a lot of folks, when I start talking to them, they say, okay, what, what are you talking about? Open innovation. What do you mean? So, so let me give you my take. So at ExxonMobil here you are, you're on a team and you're trying to solve a problem. You have your immediate team, you're in the weekly team meeting. They know what you're trying to do. And if they have an idea, they'll share it with you. Now you go, now that I call that level zero. Okay. That's a level zero collaboration. Level one. You might have these adjacent teams. You all report to the same place, but you're working on different things. That's a level one. Level two, there's maybe a different function next to you. Level three, there's a whole different part of the company. Now, me over here drilling the wells, now there's somebody over in a refinery, but what are they doing? Level four, for me, you're kind of getting outside the company, but these are the places you always talk to. These are the vendors, these are the professors that you're familiar with, the literature you're familiar with. You're getting into these higher levels. Level 5, you're kind of getting into the places you don't talk to. Level 6, you're getting into the adjacent industries. So these are industries that you never go to the agriculture conference. You don't go to the pharmaceutical conference. You don't even know what's there. And then kind of the final level is this global crowd. And these people that have completely different experiences. So what I tell people is open innovation is all of the above. You know, more than half of my projects we define the problem. I connect them to another internal team like this level three I might say. And they say, wow, this is amazing. We didn't even know there was a whole team doing this stuff over here in this other part of the company. That's actually more than half of my projects end there. Uh, now when we go outside, you know, you can get into academics, vendors, labs, et cetera. I certainly have the tips, tricks, and guidelines on those. But those are not the things that I'm really passionate about. Those are not the things that I really focus on. What I focus on number one, by far global crowdsourcing, taking your problem outside and having millions of people try to solve it. Number two, global requests for proposals. Same thing, but I'm not seeking ideas. I want a proposal. What's your product? How are you going to solve the problem? What can I buy or we can develop it together. And then number three are these open talent models. Getting out there, connecting to talent quickly on demand. You know, as you said, I actually used that strategy when I got started, I found about 50 open innovation leaders around the world connect on LinkedIn. Hey, I'd love to have a conversation with you. I'm getting started, you know, would you be willing to help me out? So those are the three things that I personally work on, but yeah, my definition. It starts inside the company because it's amazing what you can find these silos. You go from one to the other, this team's been working on your problem for 20 years. And, and, and, and it's amazing to me when I can do that because it's so easy. And then I just walk away. Uh, those are, those are probably some of the highest value things that I do.

Simon Hill:

Some incredible tips in that. So look, we're gonna, we're gonna walk through this as a bit of a chronology and we're coming to the end of the first part of that chronology, which is some of the background and, and motivation. I like those tiers that you, that you spoke about. Um, the further away you get from the core, the more you go out to the open world before you get into sort of strategy and implementation, right? Like what were, before you got that, like persuading the business, right? You've got this idea. It might sound a little bit crazy to many people, right? So, what were, before you began even, right? Before you got the, yes, Kyle, we can do this, what were, what were the challenges that you faced in just getting this program, this idea, this concept, to a point where you could start to implement it and start to build a strategy around it?

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

Yeah, well, what I would say is, I am, I am very thankful because I was empowered. You know, I, I went back a few weeks later and, and what I concluded was, look, there's not a flowchart out there. There's not something that a problem comes in and then I can just flowchart it out. Well, these are the things that we go inside. These are what we go outside. Okay. Now, if you're going to go inside, here's what you can do. You know, if you're going to go outside, here's the right option. I basically three or four weeks in, I said, look, I'm going to have to build this from scratch. And I said, and that's going to take me, that might take me four months. Thanks. And I was given that space to do these interviews. I was doing about five interviews a day. I was meeting people externally. I was very empowered. Um, so I would say when you're starting off in an open innovation program, I think that you need some space. You need some time to explore and learn what's out there. What do we have? I would say after about that, the third month or so, I wasn't really learning a lot in those interviews. So what that tells me, I think I did a good job capturing the institutional knowledge. And I was documenting it as I went, I had time to digest, by the way, one hour interview, two hours on the backend. That's a good rule of thumb for folks. If you want to use this strategy. So I had the space early on the mission was needed. We needed to be more external. So I had that support from higher up in the organization. This fit sort of a strategy, if you will. Um, so having the tie to initial strategy, having the space, I think those were the key elements of success. To kind of get it off the ground, if you will, to, to kind of get to just, just the, the table stakes, if you will, uh, I think you need about half a year and you need some, some high level support to help you navigate that early phase. Cause you're not going to have a big return on investment documenting and putting together tips, tricks, and guidelines.

Simon Hill:

And I think in those early days, you know, you were sort of down at the desk helping to write the, you know, some of the paperwork to sit behind all of this as well. Right. So you really get your hands dirty on this one of helping the business to get into a place where it could start to get into strategy and implementation.

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

And I would say that actually gets into what I might call phase two. So phase one is sort of the analysis phase. Phase two, we could call it the early implementation phase. And just like you said, okay, great. Well, guess what I learned? I want to do, I want to do crowdsourcing. I can't just turn that on, okay? It's going to take some time. What platform am I going to use? I need to look at that. And then if I actually, when it's ready to bring the platform in, that's going to take some time as well, right? This stuff doesn't happen overnight. Uh, I had to get some funding in place, you know, et cetera. Uh, so yes, that phase again, it's going to take six to 12 months after the analysis. To, to just get this thing built, I had to go get alignment with a bunch of different sort of senior stakeholders, right? And say, Hey, we're going to be doing open innovation. These are the things I want to focus on. Crowdsourcing, RFPs, open talent. How does that sound? And then, and then go have meeting with the reports and go have meeting with the reports of the reports and try to get kind of everybody's buy in. Different teams have very different cultures and you have to, it's going to take you some time in that middle phase. To go learn the culture. Is it, is it a, you know, they don't have enough time, they don't have enough budget, they don't have enough people. They're very sensitive about IP. What are those challenges? And then you have to custom build your open innovation program to meet those needs. Again, I feel like I was very empowered and given this space to explore. Now in that middle phase, there started to be, you know, some questions saying, hey, you know, you, we really need to do some projects. You need to show something, right? And so there, you do need to start, kind of, I would say within six months, you're gonna need to start doing something, some type of advising Uh, little projects. If you already have existing capabilities in the company, try to leverage those and try to get a few shots on the goal to get to get something on the board.

Simon Hill:

Yeah, getting getting started and getting out of the talk is pretty important before we get into that and like talking about how you went about selecting, you know, the partners that could support you in delivering it. Did you? Did you find that people understood the thing that you were asking them to do? So we're crowdsourcing, I guess RFPs are a little bit more familiar, but perhaps more in a procurement sense, right? Like, why would, why would an open talent team or an open innovation team be doing RFPs? May have been a question. And then open talent itself, like, was that something that was, was understood or you had to take time to educate the business into just, just what are these, these concepts? They sound a bit wild.

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

You know, I would say the organization is, is very heterogeneous certain parts of the organization. I would go talk to them about these techniques. By the end they were giving me tips and tricks and they were saying yeah, we have this whole document here on how to do XYZ, we have this whole webpage with examples of ABC, and every time that happened I was integrating that, integrating, integrating, integrating. So anything that I would learn I would integrate. Some teams, They would basically say, Kyle, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't really like it, but I understand that this is important because I understand that we do need to be more external. That's what I've been told as well. And I agree that the things that you're bringing, these look like really good tools and then they would just slowly come on the journey and then there were some teams that I went and talked to. And I think, I think their conclusion was fair. They basically said, this is not a good fit for the kind of things we do here. And I never got another call again. I think that's perfectly okay. Um, but yeah, I would say very heterogeneous, be prepared for, for crash and burn failure meetings that you come out the other end and you just go, wow, that was, that did not go very well. That is totally okay. Because you know what? There were other meetings that I came out and it, and it was just felt amazing. We already had a project. We started scoping out, maybe they taught me something. Uh, you know, I would get quotes like this. I'm so excited to hear about crowdsourcing. I've been hearing about it. This is really cool. How can I get started? How can I help? So, so also be prepared for those champions that are going to come out of the woodwork. Is there something you can do to kind of empower them, give them some materials, give them a, give them some type of virtual assignment where they can really start to help you. Because those people, those are the ones that really keep you going from a motivation standpoint is seeing that passion. And energy right out of the gate, right? As soon as you start presenting,

Simon Hill:

knowing, knowing you're not the only one fighting this thing that seemed like a great idea, but maybe it wasn't right. Is that you find you start to build this network of champions that do get it and become ambassadors in the business. Um, I'm really are offering operating like a startup inside the business, right? Doing your own sales and marketing and storytelling and other things. So. Maybe I can lead you into that of like, you know, how, how, what, what was some of the tools and techniques you use to build that internal support and those local champions?

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

Yeah, well, what I would say is, uh, early days, what I, what I tried to do, I tried to get a very firm grasp through these about 150 discussions I had on, What have you done externally? What went well? What didn't go well? And, and if they would tell me something didn't go well, really try to dig in a little bit. Well, why is that? What occurred? And then try to go find solutions to what they said and try to have something ready. So number one, I would say is, uh, this is a culture change journey for, for, I think every company pretty much. If you're building an open innovation program. People are there. It's a culture change, right? And so one of the first reactions in a culture changes, well, I don't like it. Here's why I don't like it because of a, I don't like it because of C and I definitely don't like it because of D. Uh, so what you need to be doing is be prepared and have really credible answers, or there were a lot of calls where I said, that's a really good point. Let me follow up on that. And, and you know, that, that is not the way you want to go. Be prepared. Number two, what are the past examples where it went well? What was the value added? You need to be able to explain, here's something that I found. We did it five years ago. Now, I didn't do this work, but I think this is a great example. If you can't find that, you might want to use some analogs. Here's something that another company did. Look how this worked out. This looks very successful. Um, that was kind of the early days as you started, as I started to get a couple of projects, I tried to talk about work that I did. And nowadays. It's the last phase. Those people who did the projects, I have them come and talk about what they did. So it's, this isn't my program. I give the frame of Open Innovation what it is, why we should care. And then I say, okay, you know, Sarah, why don't you come and give your presentation? And they look over and they say, oh, well, yeah, she, she's in our function. Okay. So that adds a lot of credibility. That's kind of the final phase, I would say.

Simon Hill:

Yeah, and that's very much back to that point of this is not a, it's a capability, right, that we're building for the organization. And ultimately, you want to get that framework and that playbook out there and let people let people run with it. And as we'll see, you've done a great job of moving from POC to an increasingly scaled flywheel of capability in the business in a remarkable short period of time. Before we get there, and I think that'll be my next question Just talk a little bit about the work you did to Find and then form some of the key partnerships and collaborations that you've got both internal and external because you can't do this I think without without finding the right external support to to power this open innovation

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

Well, I I think what I would say I think my program is evidence That my program works. So when you look at the open talent space The willingness of individuals to have a conversation. No, this isn't something, uh, you know, fancy. It's just, Hey, I'm getting started in open innovation. I see that on your LinkedIn, you've been doing this for five years. I'm wondering if we could have a conversation and it was amazing the people that would come and they could give me some, some guidance on like, well, where to get started. There's a lot of good communities out there. Join these communities. Just start showing up at the call. Just listen. What are they saying? Um, you know, other, other types of tools, you know, obviously web searches, uh, but, but I think the people part was the key. I think asking other people about their experiences. What works for you? What didn't work for you? I think having those conversations, uh, I think, uh, looking very openly, uh, I could have easily just said, Oh, well, here's something that we used five years ago. I'll just use that. Uh, I did not do that. I tried to be very objective. I tried to think about what are the different dimensions. And, and for me personally, when it comes to platforms, I really, I really prioritized platforms that had a lot of history, a lot of runtime, And I really wanted a platform that was credible in terms of their ability to kind of mentor and guide me. Uh, so I wasn't necessarily just looking for a certain set of features. I was really looking for that credibility, that mentorship. And I think that, in my opinion, I think that has, has paid off having those, having those people that have done this for 20 years. Those are the, those are the types of folks I think that you need in your corner in that first,

Simon Hill:

uh, year. Yeah, because it's tough, right? So yeah, the more people standing alongside you giving you, giving you guidance and, and, uh, helping you to learn and avoid some of the lessons and pitfalls that have already been done before. Because it's, it's not easy, right? So let's, let's talk a little bit around that from, from, you know, The business is like, great. Like, it sounds wonderful. Let's, let's get started. So talk about how about you got from that first, you know, single proof of concepts, you know, how was that one selected? What did it, what did it, what can you share about that into building an embedded capabilities? This is quite a big question, right? This is the meat of how did we get out of, out of a great idea and, and, and sort of early strategy. Into walking the walk, learning some lessons. And then in your case, remarkably building like incredible demand. As you said up front, less than 12 months, right? We talk about this as less than 18 months, but challenge through, I think is less than 18 months of just incredible success. So what did we learn? What did we do? What can others do that would, uh, that would let them repeat that success?

Kyle Basler-Reeder:

Yeah, and, and, and I get this question a lot and, uh, so it is something that I've, I have the luxury I've had to, to think about this and reflect on this and I've answered this and I thought about how I answered it. What I would tell you, I, I, I firmly believe the key was thinking about this as a marketing effort. So if you're a marketing person, there's a couple of things you can do. One, you can tailor your message so that your audience. Here's it. So, so again, think about it as a culture thing. Think about being empathetic to the person you're presenting to. Why did, why, why is this person going to care about open innovation? Is it going to save them time? Is it going to save them money? What is it? Uh, do they have a really stubborn problem? Um, you know, and then I think thinking more about, um, just the numbers. Okay. So, so who are you presenting to? I often have this question. Well, how did you decide the groups to go talk to? And I will admit to you that I didn't really think a whole lot about it. I printed out the organizational chart. I saw that there were about, you know, 200 teams total in the technology organization. I went and talked to senior leaders for each of those functions. And I said, tell me about this group of 12 teams. What, what do they do? Which one should I talk to? Here's kind of what open innovation is. And they might say, well, these teams here, those probably aren't the best fit for this sort of thing. These teams, this would be really good. And I say, okay, great. Well, tell me more. Like who, who's the supervisor? What are the sorts of things they're working on? So getting to know and going really broad. So, so at the beginning, I would say number one thing that was most important is organizational readiness. Who's ready to get in the game? Who is ready to go and execute a project? Okay. Now you don't know ahead of time, which teams are ready and which are not. So, so don't try to engineer it. It's a numbers game. Get out there. Think about the empathy, think about the audience. And then again, I would just say, just get out there. So I've, I've actually presented open innovation to about 130 teams by now. Um, I try to keep those sessions small. I learned early on. If I talk to 200 people, I don't get any leads. If I talk to a hundred people, I don't get any leads. There's some psychological thing there that I'm no expert on, but what I can tell you is this, you get 20 people in the room, you have a really good conversation, maybe even a tough conversation, but the people who don't like it, they're able to share with you why, you're able to address it, and then it's small enough that the people who like it will then say, Yeah, you know, I agree that that's a challenge, but I think there's a big opportunity here or hey I saw this thing last week on linkedin or whatever it is So so I think a numbers game getting the getting the boots on the ground get out there have the conversations Don't be afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of difficult conversations because they will happen And and then once you start getting those projects going you find the people that are ready The job becomes so much easier because now i'm saying yeah, okay. Let me pull something up here Okay, here's something that we we're doing right now. Here's something that we closed last month. I think those types of Things that that's like five to 10 times more effective than here's a bunch of theory and concepts Here's some things I heard about on the internet um So the key was the getting on the boots on the ground and then getting the early projects and then it just kind of snowballs From there.

Simon Hill:

Thanks kyle. This has been an incredible discussion so far with so much insights and information shared for our listeners I'm, really excited for part two in which we'll dig deeper into the lessons learned Scaling the capability and so much more You So thank you very much. Thank you to everybody for listening to this episode of the total innovation podcast, please subscribe for updates on upcoming shows and for all things, total innovation. Check out wazoku at www. wazoku. com and thank you Kyle again for your time today. It's been incredible. Thank you for the great discussion.

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