11.Tom Goodwin: Digital isn't a thing - it's everything Artwork

Total Innovation Podcast

Welcome to "Total Innovation," the podcast where I explore all the different aspects of innovation, transformation and change. From the disruptive minds of startup founders to the strategic meeting rooms of global giants, I bring you the stories of change-makers. The podcast will engage with different voices, and peer into the multi-faceted world of innovation across and within large organisations.

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Join me 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.

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

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Total Innovation Podcast

11.Tom Goodwin: Digital isn't a thing - it's everything

November 12, 2024 • Wazoku Team

Tom Goodwin is a writer, speaker and advertising and media provocateur and consultant. He has been voted a top 10 voice in Marketing by LinkedIn, one of 30 people to follow on Twitter by Business Insider, and a 'must follow' by Fast Company. An industry commentator on the future of marketing and business, he is a columnist for TechCrunch and Forbes and frequent contributor to The Guardian, GQ, Ad Age, Wired, Ad Week, Inc, MediaPost & Digiday. He is based between London, England, and New York City in the United States.

He is author of Digital Darwinism which shines a light on the future by exploring technology, society and lessons from the past so you can understand how to adapt, what to embrace and what to ignore. Tom Goodwin proves that assumptions the business world has previously made about "digital" are wrong: incremental change isn't good enough, adding technology at the edges won't work and digital isn't a thing - it's everything. If you want your organization to succeed in the post-digital age, you need to be enlightened by Digital Darwinism.

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

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Building a Culture of Innovation Resources

Simon Hill: [00:00:00] Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of the Total Innovation podcast. Our guest today is not short of an opinion, not shy at voicing these opinions, and very happy, I think, to take the contrarian view to test these opinions. I invite him to the show after enjoying one of his many thought provoking LinkedIn posts and enjoying his book, Digital Darwinism.

And with that short intro, welcome to the podcast, Tom Goodwin.

Tom Goodwin: Thank you, Simon. I am going to be a bit annoying and take a bit of an issue there with this idea of contrarianism. Um, because I think a lot of these things come down to intentions. My intention is not to have different opinions. My, I just have thoughts and beliefs and ideas and I share them on social media.

And I guess the ones that are most provocative and annoying are the ones that travel furthest. Um, but I'm quite surprised as an industry, how delicate we are about people just, you know, asking questions about the assumptions we make. Make, you know, to click through makes on advertising really matter. Um, you know, should AI be used to [00:01:00] make things cheaper and faster rather than better?

Like, I'm, I'm just a sort of a gobby stranger that's just, um, interested in learning more about the world.

Simon Hill: Alright. You're taking a contrarian due to my contrarian view.

Tom Goodwin: to myself.

Simon Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Um, and I, and I, and I get that, I think maybe it's a contrarian user to a certain degree of social media, right.

Which has become a little bit of a. Of an echo chamber of stuff. And so yeah, you do stand out. And as a result, you're, you know, you get a lot of engagement with, uh, with the things that you put out there, which might feel a bit contrary, or maybe it's just a different approach. And it seems to work. So maybe it's an approach that that other folks should should pay more attention to, um, as well for before we get too deep into that for folks that don't know you and you are, you know, you are fairly well known out there, but the folks that don't, you just, just introduce yourself a little bit and maybe talk a little bit about the concepts of digital Darwinism as well.

Tom Goodwin: Yeah. So, um, I'm very lucky in that I travel around the world looking at things and people, um, and I read a lot and my role is to understand how technology [00:02:00] is changing the world, um, how that's changing the rules of business, how that's changing the possibilities out there. Um, and then I turn that into stuff that's a little bit more useful, which is kind of consulting and keynotes, um, primarily sort of oriented around digital transformation.

Um, I guess you can kind of. blend that into innovation, but you know, how can companies make more money by doing things better is the general, uh, theme. And the sort of notion of digital Darwinism is kind of based on this idea, um, that a lot of the rules of business and a lot of the shaping parameters. Um, for how businesses operate have changed, not everything.

Um, I don't think the pace of change is necessarily faster than ever, but we are now in a situation where big companies could probably do things a lot better. Um, it's now easier to build something new than it is to change something that's old. Um, so the approach of digital Darwinism really is to look at people, look at technology and figure out what you can do better and then create some clear steps to do that.[00:03:00]

Simon Hill: And the post, the post that you responded to online that that led me to reach out finally after years of thinking we should really connect. Um, I'm just going to kind of read through it a little bit without, without, without narrating the whole thing. But, but in essence, there was a, a fun post on online making slightly the point that you've got 12 million different tools standing in the way.

Of what is supposed to be enhanced productivity inside organizations, right? You know, we start with an email and then copy it into notion to do something else and then move across to Monday for something else. And then capture it in Salesforce or something else. I don't remember the exact tools that were up there and it kind of provoked a response from you, which is very close to my heart.

And also you mentioned productivity and transformation and, um, You know, there's a good argument folk can put forward that despite the plethora of different software solutions that have been created, the productivity hasn't really been enhanced. And that was kind of the point of that post, I guess. Right.

Tom Goodwin: Yes. I have this, um, [00:04:00] so I'm going to sound perhaps grumpy or perhaps optimistic here. I have this incredible tension where. I meet people who are amazing. Like I meet people who are amazing all day long. Um, almost everyone I meet that's in a big or a small company is, it's kind of amazing and they have these dreams and they have these passions and they have these skills and they're curious.

And then you stick all those amazing people together in a meeting room. Um, and then you see the very most stupid meetings that you've ever seen. You know, you see people optimizing towards KPIs that don't make a difference. You see people agreeing to do projects, which don't need to exist. You know, then you take a step back and you sort of sit down next to these people and you're a bit nosy and you kind of ask them what they're doing and you realize they're doing really dumb stuff, like just copying and pasting cells from spreadsheets and making charts that no one's going to look at.

And then you look at the output of products, you know, you look at. You know, but the experience of trying to buy a car, you know, it's not a good experience. No. Should it be good? Yes. You look at the experience of getting the gas [00:05:00] person to fix the gas or buying a house or, um, you know, comparing TVs and you look at all of this stuff and you think this is awful.

You know, how is it that we live in a country where we don't really know how many people live here? How is it that we carry around sort of paper booklets that get stamped with ink? Um, how is it that the vaccine passport in the U S was printed on. Cardboard that was black and white, too big for a wallet.

And there wasn't even a database behind it. You look at this sort of output of all of these hardworking, well intentioned, brilliant people, and somehow it's not working. Like somehow we're spending all of our life in meetings that are generally pointless, um, and we're missing out on all these opportunities to do things better.

Um, so I get very, very frustrated and some people look at that and they think I'm this wonderful, optimistic person that wants to make the world better. And some people think I've got first class problems because I moan about how long it takes to change your seat on a flight.

Simon Hill: Yeah. But I think what you're really trying to do is just pick up on the, the more tangible things.

I don't remember if you interacted with this post or [00:06:00] I saw it somewhere else, but there was. A similar view on that this week of, you know, I don't need AI to help me be more creative and write better things. I wanted to help me get rid of some of the boring jobs, like doing the laundry and, uh, and stacking the dishwasher and the things that life admin, that means that I can get into do the more creative, more fun things as a human being.

Tom Goodwin: We're in a, we're in a weird place. So, um, fundamentally technology is absolutely extraordinary and it combined.

It's with other forms of technology to make this absolutely bananas good canvas of possibility. Um, I don't know that much about coding, but in about 2009, I sat down next to a very good coder while I worked for a digital agency and we were making a second screen app for a TV show. And every time I said to this coder person, you know, is there a [00:07:00] way to do that?

Uh, they'd be like, yeah, and then I'd sort of think, oh, that was sort of easier than I thought. And then a bit later on, I'd say, you know, is there a way to have like a real time map? And then you can sort of pull in data from there. And they'd be like, yeah, yeah, that's quite easy, actually. And I sort of learned that technology people are amazing at making things happen.

Um, people like me are pretty good, pretty bad at instinctively knowing what's really hard and what's really easy. And I think we're in this weird moment in time. Um, I don't mean to be offensive here, but the sort of technology people are kind of leading the way, you know, they're the people developing the product roadmap based on what's easiest to do.

Um, they're the people that are kind of in charge of, um, product delivery. Um, and I don't think they're very well placed to understand a business. I don't think they're very well placed to understand people, you know, so they tend to do a good job of creating solutions to their problems. You know, so how do I get a pizza?

Yeah. If I'm hung over, um, how do I get my clones cleaned? You know, cause I don't live with my mom [00:08:00] anymore. How do I talk to girls or guys? You know, they're very good at creating solutions to their own problems. Um, how do I make art? And how do I make a movie? Um, they're terrible at solving the problems that real people have.

So I would love there to be a better approach where these tribes kind of come together. And where people with imagination and people with empathy and people who understand the real business problems that are being faced, um, people who understand the, the kind of core competence of a company, people who understand the brand and the values.

If those people can kind of just dance a lot more with technology, but get a little bit more power. Then actually, you know, what, what should a bank feel like in 2026? That's an interesting project to work on. Um, what types of insurance can we invent that don't exist? Um, how can we pay for products and services in a different way?

Uh, what new business models are there to, to sell stuff online? I just think there's the, all these really, really amazing kind of briefs to work on like that. And, and somehow, you know, if you look [00:09:00] at what's been done, you know, it's, it's very sort of superficial and it's quite, it's quite unhelpful. You know, the metaverse wasn't really very helpful.

Um, blockchain wasn't really very helpful. Um, you know, Apple vision pro isn't really that helpful. Um, how do we do things that help people live better lives?

Simon Hill: And I think, I think that's, you know, that's where a lot of the hype has sat. Right. A lot of the, a lot of the money chasing, I guess, as well, perspective.

So how do we reconcile that? Like, where do you, you know, the money's going in that direction, the enthusiasm, the excitement, I guess, let's call it the innovation theater to a degree

Tom Goodwin: going

Simon Hill: in that. Is that just because we're in a. You know, step X of a, of a multi stepped process towards a big change, or is it just human nature?

That's just moving us in that direction and we're not really moving anywhere.

Tom Goodwin: It's a very good question. I mean, let's, let's sort of, um, let's, let's focus this on maybe the types of people who listen to this podcast, which I guess are people in innovation or maybe people who work in kind of big companies.[00:10:00]

Um. I think big companies are really bad at doing innovation properly. Um, I think it's incredibly hard to create a business case for something that's not been done before. Um, I think it's incredibly hard to make anything happen unless there's a business case. I think companies are terrible at recognizing that the cost of doing nothing.

It's quite often massive because it's a kind of lost opportunity. Um, so I get, um, I'm aware the most innovation is kind of like, you know, double R on a Friday at school. You know, it's, it's not why people went to school. It's not what people think is core for their career. Um, it's just a little bit of fun.

It's the kind of brainstorm with the post it notes in the sofa with the funky looking sofas. Um, maybe even a neon sign saying innovate, you know, we haven't come that far from that. Um, I think companies need to recognize that innovation is actually one of the greatest levers that they have to pull the, the better products and services.[00:11:00]

Um, I like pushing water downhill rather than pushing water uphill with, with giant advertising budgets. Um, so I think we need to create a culture where people recognize the enormous Um, ability of companies to create really serious business value from doing this. Um, I, I tend to think that companies are not screwed.

You know, there's a lot of innovation, future y people who kind of go around saying, you know, you either disrupt or you're dead. I don't think that's true. I think, I think, you know, most banks are going to be around for a long time. Most insurance companies are going to be around for a long time. Most energy companies are fine.

Most car companies are probably kind of fine. Um, although that's a bit more debatable. Um, I think companies should just do this cause that's. That's, that's why they got created in the first place. You know, every company started as a small, thirsty, hungry, agile, brilliant place. Um, how do we get them to, how do we get them to sort of reinvent themselves continually?

How do we get them to really enjoy this process? [00:12:00] How do we get them to take more risks and be comfortable with that? You know, I think there's a lot of work to be done and I think it's all good fun.

Simon Hill: Part of it, I think. You know, there's a lot of work goes into trying to predict the future, spotting trends, understanding what these emerging opportunity spaces might be.

But yet, no matter how good we are and whatever domain that is in with all this data flying around, I feel like a lot of companies were caught by surprise in the emergence of, you know, open AI, or let's take an even more anodyne example by the performance of Spain in the euros this year, right? There's all this data that flies around.

Yeah, we don't really know much, right? And so I did see I did see a quote recently. I think it was from the CEO of Reddit that said, you know, trends are dead, basically, because they bend so quickly these days, we can't predict them. And the big one still catches by surprise. So I'm sort of moving us around a little bit on that.

But do you have a perspective on that?

Tom Goodwin: Um, so I'm not like a history scholar, um, and I'm [00:13:00] not a genius. Um, I, I've got a pretty good track record of, of understanding where things are going. Um, like actually a really good one. I mean, like if you bought Alexa on day two. Like I did. And then you played with it for about 20 minutes.

It was quite obvious that it wasn't going to change the world. It was quite obvious that it was a really bad way to order laundry detergent. It was, it was pretty obvious that it's not how you're going to check traffic conditions. Um, It was likely that it got better fast than it did, but by looking at people and by looking at the past, it's quite easy to get a pretty good sense of what's going to happen in the world.

Um, Because history has some cycles that always repeat themselves. You know, there's always the tech diffusion curve. You know, I think it's the work of Perez. Um, there's always periods of hysteria. There's always periods where it makes sense. There's always [00:14:00] periods where people make money. And if you look back at history, it happened with every single technological revolution.

If you look at the sort of fundamental physics of all of this stuff, it's quite, it's quite easy to get a sense of the broader picture. Um, it's quite easy to, um, see trend lines coming. I mean, people today still seem to be quite surprised that people buy things online. You know, if you pop back, um, the number, the percentage of goods that are bought online, it's a very linear line, you know, apart from the whole COVID thing, which is a completely different conversation.

The macro trends are pretty easy to see. Um, there is this sort of sense that everything's moving faster than ever. I think quite often we're just a lot closer to it. I mean, it's possible to get second by second information bursts on who's resigned at OpenAI. It's possible to get real time information on a Turkish coup that actually didn't end up being a coup.

I think we [00:15:00] just need to chill out a bit, take a step back, see change in context and look at people, you know, because if you actually look at your average person, They're not going to be walking around with the VR headset on. If you actually look at your average person, they're not going to log into a website by sharing their crypto wallet data.

Um, almost everything, it's actually quite easy to get a fairly robust, fairly accurate. Opinion, the details, you know, are people going to pick up coffee through the Starbucks app or are they going to feel awkward walking to the front of the queue? That's quite hard. You know, are Spain going to have this amazing game with people running off the ball in all directions to create space?

That's quite hard to know. But generally speaking, you know, things like the phone being very important to us, things like people wanting things to happen more easily and things like people needing brands to give their Life meaning to help them make purchase decisions, to show off who they are, to demonstrate status, you know, these are all things that have been [00:16:00] around for about 5, 000 years.

And I don't think they're going to change that time soon.

Simon Hill: Oh, as part of this, um, series of, uh, podcasts, I've spoken to folk. I know, you know, like I just did one with Greg Satel talking about resistance to change and. Stephen Shapiro, who you might know, who's talking about his new book, Pivotal, and focusing on, you know, the planted foot, the thing that doesn't change that much is your point of sort of solid differentiation that you can then innovate around.

There's a challenge for organizations that they don't quite know what that is. Like they don't really understand the resistance to change that's going to come from inside their organizations. And often a lot of that change isn't as sexy as there's an obvious end consumer, right? Like lots of things that we make and produce are mid value chain somewhere, right?

There's people working on stuff that will eventually get to an end user and a consumer somewhere. But. There's a whole lot of work done and time spent and money invested to get to a lot of end [00:17:00] products that have, you know, passed through a value chain of a value chain of a value chain. And so a lot of the innovation where that happens in there is quite different than maybe the very digital stuff that we see online or the, or the purchasing of a car.

Um, that had to be made right through through a variety of things. Um, somewhere in there is a, how do we improve that stuff, right? You know, cause there's a, it's, it's kind of easy to punch a little bit at the, at the digital web front end or, you know, the, the power of advertising in X, Y, or Z domain. What about the slightly less sexy, but really profoundly important stuff that makes the world, the world, I guess, in terms of how it works today.

Tom Goodwin: I think this is, um, a very difficult area. Um, this is partly in all honesty why I make most of my money or a lot of my money from keynotes is because actually bringing about change is really hard. Um, I can be quite smug about my ability to have predicted the future and understand the broad themes, but I am incredibly bad.

Uh, understanding how to [00:18:00] motivate individuals. Um, I'm, I'm pretty bad at understanding culture and how to get that to shift. Um, I, I have often made the mistake that people are happier to take risks than they are. I've often made the mistake that people, um, care about doing a good job. And pushing things further in their roles, um, I'm generally amazed at how many people see their career as, you know, kind of getting through the day and getting another promotion and saying the right things.

So I tend to be catastrophically bad, um, at selling in ideas that I know to be good because I'm not that good at understanding how to motivate people to care. Um, I think there's a lot of fear in the world. Um, especially in America. Most of the work that I do is in America. I think, I think people are terrified about losing their job.

They're terrified about losing their health insurance. They're terrified, uh, kind of to, to [00:19:00] get noticed in a way. I think a lot of people subconsciously think that by being small, You know, it's been like the VW Beetle advert that by being small, you know, they can sort of be safe. Um, and I wonder how much that is true.

Like, I do wonder if this era of LinkedIn and people shouting a lot, um, and Twitter and all the sort of performance there, I do wonder if actually. Lead to day job security doesn't come from not getting noticed, but by having a reputation for caring, um, a reputation for making stuff happen. Um, I think, I think being able to get stuff happen, um, is probably the greatest.

I'm trying to be polite. Normally people say getting shit done. Um, I think being able to get shit done is probably the greatest undervalued skill there is. And do you think

Simon Hill: that does come down to human nature again, like, if you believe the hype around this, particularly over the last couple of years like that, you'd think that the entire power shift in the employee employer [00:20:00] relationship had shifted to the employee and the, you know, the great resignation was happening and everyone would sort of shun job security.

And I think it was very niche. A lot of that stuff really, probably more journalistic, you know, people, we know exactly than, uh, than, than anything else. Um, I guess you and I are fairly aligned on some of that skepticism around that, that need to write words and column, column inches rather than, you know, narrate, narrate facts, because I do agree with you.

I think at the heart of it, there's, There's a risk aversion, a safety and culture of fear at a lot of, at the heart of all of this, that inhibits change. I also think there's just a lot of org design that doesn't facilitate it. Right. And, um, prefer of getting into too much of the, of the grunt of the organization.

I do think there's a lot of the grunt of the organization then inhibits human nature. Um, wrong, maybe it's a species. We just are mostly inherently risk, inherently risk averse. And that that's why folks like you and me don't really work for big companies and we've worked for. [00:21:00]

Tom Goodwin: I think that that's the hardest thing that I find is, um, you know, realistic.

I always loved going to a head office. Uh, I was once going to write a book called, um, head office. Uh, head offices and what they say about the company, because, you know, you can sort of drive down this, um, four lane highway and come off the road. And there's this sort of big campus with 1950 style buildings and a canteen, um, and there's all this parking around and there's no sort of, um, food trucks for miles around.

And then you get your kind of perspex badge from a security desk that sort of interrogates you. And then you sort of walk down a very long soulless corridor, you know, and there'll be a sign saying, you know, you can do it. You know, anyone can have a good idea, you know, and then you're walking sort of this big bureaucratic sort of system of, you know, it looks like a kind of Cone Brothers film or something.

You walk down this big corridor full of finding cabinets and cubicles everywhere. And there'll be a sign saying, you know, um, work hard and break things. And you just think that's not why people came here, you know, people [00:22:00] came here because there's a good pension. People came here because there's a robust structured training program.

You know, this is not going to attract the kind of people, um, who want to make change and that's fine. But I think companies like that and people like that should be a little bit more honest about Their intentions. And I think when they stand up at South by Southwest and they talk about how they've digitally transformed, they should recognize that it's just not how they are.

Um, so I think maybe companies need to do a better job of being more honest and more consistent with what they're about. And I think a lot of companies would do well to recognize that actually. You know, they do need to unleash this energy of innovation and they do need people who are genuinely compelled to share ideas when they have them.

And they do need to have some processes, but mainly a culture where, um, someone jumping up and down and running into the boardroom and saying, you know, we need to do this. is acceptable. You know, we need to [00:23:00] have a culture where as part of your performance review, you know, you should not, not just the sort of classic share failures thing, but almost be like, you know, here are two ideas that I had that I cared about so much, you know, I risk getting fired or here's like a genuine, you know, misunderstanding I had about the world and what I've learned from it.

Like, I think we really need to double down on some of that stuff.

Simon Hill: Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I mean, I admire businesses. I guess, you know, somewhat like 3m, I'm going to have someone from 3m on the podcast, um, coming up,

Tom Goodwin: um,

Simon Hill: who really do build that into their business model, right? This expectation, um, that every, every year a percentage of revenue is coming from, from new things invented in the last few years that creates that necessity and that compulsion to have to drive that through.

And I think there's, there's something quite nice in that vitality index approach to it, even though it feels very financial and mechanical, I think it does feed through to. Yeah. That's in quite an [00:24:00] interesting way.

Tom Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, I worry sometimes that people's jobs are not fun anymore.

You know, I know that sounds a little bit pathetic, but, um, I've been really lucky. Like pretty much every week of my life, I've had a lot of fun in my job. Um, and you look at this sort of culture of spreadsheets and, um, compliance, um, in both Senses of the words and kind of PowerPoint presentations where people have had meetings before the meeting, before the meeting to make sure that nothing interesting can happen.

Um, and I do kind of wonder, you know, what does this, uh, you know, what happens if we have a massive argument in a meeting because two people really disagree and they both got loads of information behind and it's not remotely emotional, it's entirely professional. You know what happens if someone sort of spins out of control and they care so much about an idea that they steal money from one budget to make an MVP, you know, maybe these, uh, maybe we should always be a little bit scared and maybe we should always be having a bit of fun.

Simon Hill: Yeah. Leave room for fun. It's not, [00:25:00] it's, it's a, it's a nice aspiration for sure, isn't it? I think, uh, I think it's, I think it's a stretch. I mean, you, you talked earlier and I'm going to kind of weave us in a little bit to, um, The speed of change. I was reflecting on that. I think you even posted on that yesterday or this morning,

Tom Goodwin: um,

Simon Hill: as well.

Uh, and certainly from my experience, like I remember 10 years ago, we signed a partnership with Microsoft as a, um, office three, six, five kind of cloud rollout piece, I think, you know, as you said earlier, it took till the pandemic to accelerate most big companies, making some kind of leap to crop to cloud.

A lot of government departments are starting to make the leap to cloud. Even now, I've got a conference where that's still going to be the theme. Um, and so, you know, the speed of change, as you've alluded to always feels super rapid, but the enterprise is so, so resistant to it that it jumps on it from a hype perspective with, you know, with good PR, but the reality behind the scenes is often so different.

How do you think that plays out in things like the AI, uh, story [00:26:00] at the moment and the impacts on, on the, on the business in any meaningful way?

Tom Goodwin: Yeah, I would say that AI is quite an extraordinary thing. It's quite unknown and it's quite vague. Um, and AI has the potential to be the kind of Claxton, uh, or the, the foghorn that plays throughout this podcorn as, uh, told me wrong this time is different.

Um, cause it kind of could be, I mean, AI is absolutely extraordinary. Um. My, my sense is that AI makes the greatest difference when it's applied in quite deep ways, when it kind of integrates into other systems and when it's a better way to solve the problem. Um, and it shouldn't be doing things that are done because it's cheaper or faster, but because it's a much better way to, to solve the problem.

So I think there is the potential. For this to be one of the great kind of paradigm leaps in the world, you know, that there are, there are times when there is a technology that's so extraordinary, you know, like electricity, um, like computing, um, like the internet, where there is [00:27:00] genuinely an environment where people that jump on it quickly, not necessarily first, in fact, rarely do the first movers win.

Um, but they jump on it quickly and profoundly and deeply, and they create things that have never been seen before. So they don't, they don't merely take the new technology and augment how they did things before, but they kind of rethink what can be done and what can be made around the power of that technology.

And I think AI has the potential to be a kind of an accelerant, um, that we rarely see. Um, but that doesn't mean that companies have to be running around like headless chickens, sort of doing everything and talking about everything and uploading all of their private sensitive data to cloud systems that other people can hack.

Um, it means that companies need to understand this and they need to experiment with it and they need to have a culture of curiosity. Um, and they need to keep it in mind when they're having conversations and they need to find the right moment to kind of pounce on it with the right technology. Um, so I do think it has the to [00:28:00] somewhat.

Negate many of the things that we've said, I do think it has the potential to roll out more quickly and to create an awful lot of change very, very quickly. Um, but that doesn't mean we're talking about months or weeks or days. That probably means we're talking about years. Um, And we should remember, um, we're just so close to everything.

Everyone's so obsessed with, you know, what's, what's chat GBT three versus 3. 5. What's it, how does it compare with Claude? What does Sora mean? Everyone's so sort of, um, driven to be the first person to kind of write the piece that I think we need to. A good way to think about change, I think, is to imagine a kind of, uh, uh, uh, a newspaper that's written every year, um, and you have to kind of write a piece about all of the changes that happened in that year and what they meant, um, and I think if you, if you act like a CEO that almost reads an annual newspaper, um, that's probably a good way to jump on things that [00:29:00] are actually going to make a big difference.

Simon Hill: Yeah, I was playing with, um, the, this new, uh, um, open source that I learned yesterday called Moshi coming out of France and it's interesting, but. It, it did, it does this, there's a video going around of it, which, uh, is quite funny. I encourage people to check out where it creates, if it gets a bit lost, it creates this terrifying scream that sounds like it's coming out of, I don't know, it's like the film, the ring, if you've seen that or something, it's pretty airy.

And I was like, I feel like that's the voice inside certain people, like the, the, the, the LLM heads at times as they're kind of getting bashed around quite a lot of in name stuff, I think at the moment, um, as, as you go. So. Yeah, somewhere in there was a slight parody of the, uh, of the thing that we're playing around with at the moment, which is, you know, it's, it is right.

It's a massive global experiment. I still think it's in a very niche bubble as well, right? This is not like it's, it's, it's mass market, um, in its, in its adoption or utility. It's also a bit [00:30:00] wizard of Oz, right? There's a lot of people, there's a lot of humans behind the scenes being on this stuff right now as well, teaching, training, retraining.

Yeah.

Tom Goodwin: Absolutely. I mean, I think one thing to recognize is the survivorship bias that happens with this stuff. Um, it reminds me a bit of those sort of game shows. I think it was the generation game where they got like an expert in cake making to make a cake and they do it brilliantly. And then the people on the show would try and make a cake and they do it very badly or it was a pot.

Often it was a pot. Um, and when you see what can be done with this technology, it's easy to feel like it's going to change everything, but then you actually try and use it for a real case. And you realize that often the outputs aren't that good. Even if you spend time interrogating it, the outputs are not that good.

Often there are flaws that a technology person can't see, but someone that actually knows how that world works can see, and often the people going around saying, this is going to take the job. of architects or graphic designers or movie makers is, you know, those are people that are simply demonstrating they [00:31:00] don't understand what these jobs involve.

Simon Hill: Yeah, I, you know, as an innovator, I like the experimental part of this, this global experimentation and learning and figuring out, which I guess is what we've been doing with a number of these hypes.

It's just at the end of it. We've realized that we couldn't quite figure out what problem they were solving in things like metaverse or, you know, um, Blockchain or whatever at this point in time, they may well have another incarnation in the future and it all becomes abundantly real. I'm not convinced on all of them, but anyway, I'm going to, I mean, we're going to come close to time now.

Um, conversation, I'm going to end it with a, you said, you know, people may think that I. I'm either an optimist or or the opposite side of that coin. I think you are an inherent optimist in all of this. Maybe you, maybe [00:32:00] you agree. Maybe you don't. What is it? What is it? What is it that gives you that greatest course for hope?

Is there stuff that you've seen that you're like, okay, we've got to repeat more of this or emerging things that come through that. I don't know, put a flutter in your heart and a smile on your face and in this world of, you know, fear and, and, and, uh, whatever it is, complexity at the moment.

Tom Goodwin: I'm kind of obnoxiously optimistic about pretty much everything.

Um, I think that there's never been, there's never been a greater creator of value and lever for humanity to accomplish more than technology. Um, and we have the best technology we've ever had, and we have more imagination and more resource than ever before. So we, we will create problems and we will exacerbate some existing problems, but net net, um, unleashing the power of human potential and creating lots and lots of value and wealth.

can only be a good thing for the world. Um, we now have the internet and cheap mobile devices, [00:33:00] and that means that anyone anywhere on the planet, um, can pretty much read and learn about absolutely anything. Um, anyone on the planet could decide to learn a new language, could figure out how to code, um, can interrogate, chat GPT and learn about anything as long as they Um, you can't really imagine a better scenario to propel us to greater things than knowing that anyone with curiosity can become anything.

Simon Hill: Well, I think we leave it there, Tom. I know you're very busy and you're traveling the world in part of your, your wisdom and your maybe contrarian views on, uh, on Facebook. Keep doing it. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your time. I massively appreciate it. I'm definitely on board with unleashing the power of human potential, anyone, anywhere in the world.

As you know, that's very true to my heart. So thanks. And I hope we can connect and speak again. And for everyone listening, thank you very much. As always, we appreciate your time. If you've enjoyed this, please hit [00:34:00] subscribe for future episodes. As I've already alluded to, we have some great guests coming up following Tom later in the year.

And Tom, all the best. Travel safe.

Tom Goodwin: My pleasure. Thank you,

everyone.

Welcome everyone to another exciting episode of the Total Innovation podcast. Our guest today is not short of an opinion, not shy at voicing these opinions, and very happy, I think, to take the contrarian view to test these opinions. I invite him to the show after enjoying one of his many thought provoking LinkedIn posts and enjoying his book, Digital Darwinism.

And with that short intro, welcome to the podcast, Tom Goodwin. Thank you, Simon. I am going to be a bit annoying and take a bit of an issue there with this idea of contrarianism. Um, because I think a lot of these things come down to intentions. My intention is not to have different opinions. My, I just have thoughts and beliefs and ideas and I share them on social media.

And I guess the ones that are most provocative and annoying are the ones that travel furthest. Um, but I'm quite surprised as an industry, how [00:35:00] delicate we are about people just, you know, asking questions about the assumptions we make. Make, you know, to click through makes on advertising really matter. Um, you know, should AI be used to make things cheaper and faster rather than better?

Like, I'm, I'm just a sort of a gobby stranger that's just, um, interested in learning more about the world. Alright. You're taking a contrarian due to my contrarian view. to myself. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Um, and I, and I, and I get that, I think maybe it's a contrarian user to a certain degree of social media, right.

Yeah. So, um, I'm very lucky in that I travel around the world looking at things and people, um, and I read a lot and my role is to understand how technology is changing the world, um, how that's changing the rules of business, how that's changing the possibilities out there. Um, and then I turn that into stuff that's a little bit more useful, which is kind of consulting and keynotes, um, primarily sort of oriented around digital transformation.

Um, I don't think the pace of change is necessarily faster than ever, but we are now in a situation where big companies could probably do things a lot better. Um, it's now easier to build something new than it is to [00:37:00] change something that's old. Um, so the approach of digital Darwinism really is to look at people, look at technology and figure out what you can do better and then create some clear steps to do that.

And the post, the post that you responded to online that that led me to reach out finally after years of thinking we should really connect. Um, I'm just going to kind of read through it a little bit without, without, without narrating the whole thing. But, but in essence, there was a, a fun post on online making slightly the point that you've got 12 million different tools standing in the way.

And also you mentioned productivity and transformation and, um, You know, there's a good argument folk can put forward that despite the [00:38:00] plethora of different software solutions that have been created, the productivity hasn't really been enhanced. And that was kind of the point of that post, I guess. Right.

Yes. I have this, um, so I'm going to sound perhaps grumpy or perhaps optimistic here. I have this incredible tension where. I meet people who are amazing. Like I meet people who are amazing all day long. Um, almost everyone I meet that's in a big or a small company is, it's kind of amazing and they have these dreams and they have these passions and they have these skills and they're curious.

And then [00:39:00] you look at the output of products, you know, you look at. You know, but the experience of trying to buy a car, you know, it's not a good experience. No. Should it be good? Yes. You look at the experience of getting the gas person to fix the gas or buying a house or, um, you know, comparing TVs and you look at all of this stuff and you think this is awful.

Um, so I get very, very frustrated and some people look at that and they think I'm this wonderful, optimistic person that wants to make the world better. And some people think I've [00:40:00] got first class problems because I moan about how long it takes to change your seat on a flight. Yeah. But I think what you're really trying to do is just pick up on the, the more tangible things.

I don't remember if you interacted with this post or I saw it somewhere else, but there was. A similar view on that this week of, you know, I don't need AI to help me be more creative and write better things. I wanted to help me get rid of some of the boring jobs, like doing the laundry and, uh, and stacking the dishwasher and the things that life admin, that means that I can get into do the more creative, more fun things as a human being.

I think there's a little bit of that. That piece in there that, you know, maybe we, we tend to over focus on the wrong aspects, the wrong problems, right. From a, to try and take a, an innovation lens on this. We're in a, we're in a weird place. So, um, fundamentally technology is absolutely extraordinary and it combined.

It's with other forms of technology to make this absolutely bananas good canvas of possibility. Um, I don't know that much about coding, but in about [00:41:00] 2009, I sat down next to a very good coder while I worked for a digital agency and we were making a second screen app for a TV show. And every time I said to this coder person, you know, is there a way to do that?

Um, they're the people that are kind of in charge of, um, product delivery. Um, and I don't think they're very well placed to understand a business. I don't think they're very well placed to understand people, you [00:42:00] know, so they tend to do a good job of creating solutions to their problems. You know, so how do I get a pizza?

Yeah. If I'm hung over, um, how do I get my clones cleaned? You know, cause I don't live with my mom anymore. How do I talk to girls or guys? You know, they're very good at creating solutions to their own problems. Um, how do I make art? And how do I make a movie? Um, they're terrible at solving the problems that real people have.

Uh, what new business models are there to, to sell stuff online? I just think there's the, all these really, really amazing kind of briefs to work on like that. And, and somehow, you know, if you look at what's been done, you know, it's, it's very sort of superficial and it's quite, it's quite unhelpful. You know, the metaverse wasn't really very helpful.

Um, blockchain wasn't really very helpful. Um, you know, Apple vision pro isn't really that helpful. Um, how do we do things that help people live better lives? And I think, I think that's, you know, that's where a lot of the hype has sat. Right. A lot of the, a lot of the money chasing, I guess, as well, perspective.

So how do we reconcile that? Like, where do you, you know, the money's going in that direction, the enthusiasm, the excitement, I guess, let's call it the innovation theater to a degree going in that. Is that just because we're in a. You know, step X of a, of a multi stepped process towards a big change, or is it just human nature?

That's just moving us in that direction and we're not really moving anywhere. It's a very good question. I mean, let's, [00:44:00] let's sort of, um, let's, let's focus this on maybe the types of people who listen to this podcast, which I guess are people in innovation or maybe people who work in kind of big companies.

It's the kind of brainstorm with the post it notes in the sofa with the funky looking sofas. Um, maybe even a neon sign saying innovate, you know, we haven't come that [00:45:00] far from that. Um, I think companies need to recognize that innovation is actually one of the greatest levers that they have to pull the, the better products and services.

Most car companies are probably kind of fine. Um, although that's a bit more debatable. Um, I think companies should just do this cause that's. That's, that's why they got created in the first place. You know, every company started as a small, thirsty, hungry, [00:46:00] agile, brilliant place. Um, how do we get them to, how do we get them to sort of reinvent themselves continually?

How do we get them to really enjoy this process? How do we get them to take more risks and be comfortable with that? You know, I think there's a lot of work to be done and I think it's all good fun. Part of it, I think. You know, there's a lot of work goes into trying to predict the future, spotting trends, understanding what these emerging opportunity spaces might be.

Yeah, we don't really know much, right? And so I did see I did see a quote recently. I think it was from the CEO of Reddit that said, you know, trends are dead, basically, because they bend so quickly these days, we can't predict them. And the big one still [00:47:00] catches by surprise. So I'm sort of moving us around a little bit on that.

But do you have a perspective on that? Um, so I'm not like a history scholar, um, and I'm not a genius. Um, I, I've got a pretty good track record of, of understanding where things are going. Um, like actually a really good one. I mean, like if you bought Alexa on day two. Like I did. And then you played with it for about 20 minutes.

Um, Because history has some [00:48:00] cycles that always repeat themselves. You know, there's always the tech diffusion curve. You know, I think it's the work of Perez. Um, there's always periods of hysteria. There's always periods where it makes sense. There's always periods where people make money. And if you look back at history, it happened with every single technological revolution.

The macro trends are pretty easy to see. Um, there is this sort of sense that everything's moving faster than ever. I think quite often we're just a lot closer to it. I mean, it's possible to get second by second [00:49:00] information bursts on who's resigned at OpenAI. It's possible to get real time information on a Turkish coup that actually didn't end up being a coup.

I think we just need to chill out a bit, take a step back, see change in context and look at people, you know, because if you actually look at your average person, They're not going to be walking around with the VR headset on. If you actually look at your average person, they're not going to log into a website by sharing their crypto wallet data.

That's quite hard to know. But generally speaking, you know, things like the phone being very important to us, things like people wanting things to happen more easily and things [00:50:00] like people needing brands to give their Life meaning to help them make purchase decisions, to show off who they are, to demonstrate status, you know, these are all things that have been around for about 5, 000 years.

And I don't think they're going to change that time soon. Oh, as part of this, um, series of, uh, podcasts, I've spoken to folk. I know, you know, like I just did one with Greg Satel talking about resistance to change and. Stephen Shapiro, who you might know, who's talking about his new book, Pivotal, and focusing on, you know, the planted foot, the thing that doesn't change that much is your point of sort of solid differentiation that you can then innovate around.

There's people working [00:51:00] on stuff that will eventually get to an end user and a consumer somewhere. But. There's a whole lot of work done and time spent and money invested to get to a lot of end products that have, you know, passed through a value chain of a value chain of a value chain. And so a lot of the innovation where that happens in there is quite different than maybe the very digital stuff that we see online or the, or the purchasing of a car.

I think this is, um, a very difficult area. Um, this is partly in all honesty why I make most of my money or a lot of my money from keynotes is because actually bringing about change is really hard. [00:52:00] Um, I can be quite smug about my ability to have predicted the future and understand the broad themes, but I am incredibly bad.

Uh, understanding how to motivate individuals. Um, I'm, I'm pretty bad at understanding culture and how to get that to shift. Um, I, I have often made the mistake that people are happier to take risks than they are. I've often made the mistake that people, um, care about doing a good job. And pushing things further in their roles, um, I'm generally amazed at how many people see their career as, you know, kind of getting through the day and getting another promotion and saying the right things.

So I tend to be catastrophically bad, um, at selling in ideas that I know to be good because I'm not that good at understanding how to motivate people to care. Um, I think there's a lot of fear in the world. [00:53:00] Um, especially in America. Most of the work that I do is in America. I think, I think people are terrified about losing their job.

They're terrified about losing their health insurance. They're terrified, uh, kind of to, to get noticed in a way. I think a lot of people subconsciously think that by being small, You know, it's been like the VW Beetle advert that by being small, you know, they can sort of be safe. Um, and I wonder how much that is true.

I'm trying to be polite. Normally people say getting shit done. Um, I think being able to get shit done is probably the greatest undervalued skill there is. And do you think that does come [00:54:00] down to human nature again, like, if you believe the hype around this, particularly over the last couple of years like that, you'd think that the entire power shift in the employee employer relationship had shifted to the employee and the, you know, the great resignation was happening and everyone would sort of shun job security.

I do think there's a lot of the grunt of the organization then [00:55:00] inhibits human nature. Um, wrong, maybe it's a species. We just are mostly inherently risk, inherently risk averse. And that that's why folks like you and me don't really work for big companies and we've worked for. I think that that's the hardest thing that I find is, um, you know, realistic.

You walk down this big [00:56:00] corridor full of finding cabinets and cubicles everywhere. And there'll be a sign saying, you know, um, work hard and break things. And you just think that's not why people came here, you know, people came here because there's a good pension. People came here because there's a robust structured training program.

And they do need to have some processes, but mainly a [00:57:00] culture where, um, someone jumping up and down and running into the boardroom and saying, you know, we need to do this. is acceptable. You know, we need to have a culture where as part of your performance review, you know, you should not, not just the sort of classic share failures thing, but almost be like, you know, here are two ideas that I had that I cared about so much, you know, I risk getting fired or here's like a genuine, you know, misunderstanding I had about the world and what I've learned from it.

Like, I think we really need to double down on some of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, I definitely, I mean, I admire businesses. I guess, you know, somewhat like 3m, I'm going to have someone from 3m on the podcast, um, coming up, um, who really do build that into their business model, right? This expectation, um, that every, every year a percentage of revenue is coming from, from new things invented in the last few years that creates that necessity and that compulsion to [00:58:00] have to drive that through.

Um, and I do kind of wonder, you know, what does this, uh, you know, what happens if we have a massive argument in a meeting because two people really disagree and they both got loads of information behind and it's not remotely emotional, it's entirely professional. You know what happens if someone sort of spins out of control and they care so much about an idea that they [00:59:00] steal money from one budget to make an MVP, you know, maybe these, uh, maybe we should always be a little bit scared and maybe we should always be having a bit of fun.

Yeah. Leave room for fun. It's not, it's, it's a, it's a nice aspiration for sure, isn't it? I think, uh, I think it's, I think it's a stretch. I mean, you, you talked earlier and I'm going to kind of weave us in a little bit to, um, The speed of change. I was reflecting on that. I think you even posted on that yesterday or this morning, um, as well.

A lot of government departments are starting to make the leap to cloud. Even now, I've got a conference where that's still going to be the theme. Um, and so, you know, the speed of change, as you've alluded to always feels super rapid, but the enterprise is so, so [01:00:00] resistant to it that it jumps on it from a hype perspective with, you know, with good PR, but the reality behind the scenes is often so different.

How do you think that plays out in things like the AI, uh, story at the moment and the impacts on, on the, on the business in any meaningful way? Yeah, I would say that AI is quite an extraordinary thing. It's quite unknown and it's quite vague. Um, and AI has the potential to be the kind of Claxton, uh, or the, the foghorn that plays throughout this podcorn as, uh, told me wrong this time is different.

So I think there is the potential. For this to be one of the great kind of paradigm leaps in the [01:01:00] world, you know, that there are, there are times when there is a technology that's so extraordinary, you know, like electricity, um, like computing, um, like the internet, where there is genuinely an environment where people that jump on it quickly, not necessarily first, in fact, rarely do the first movers win.

Um, it means that companies need to understand this and they need to experiment with it and they need to have a culture of [01:02:00] curiosity. Um, and they need to keep it in mind when they're having conversations and they need to find the right moment to kind of pounce on it with the right technology. Um, so I do think it has the to somewhat.

Everyone's so obsessed with, you know, what's, what's chat GBT three versus 3. 5. What's it, how does it compare with Claude? What does Sora mean? Everyone's so sort of, um, driven to be the first person to kind of write the piece that I think we need to. A good way to think about change, I think, is to imagine a kind of, uh, uh, uh, a newspaper that's written every year, um, and you have to kind of write a [01:03:00] piece about all of the changes that happened in that year and what they meant, um, and I think if you, if you act like a CEO that almost reads an annual newspaper, um, that's probably a good way to jump on things that are actually going to make a big difference.

Yeah, I was playing with, um, the, this new, uh, um, open source that I learned yesterday called Moshi coming out of France and it's interesting, but. It, it did, it does this, there's a video going around of it, which, uh, is quite funny. I encourage people to check out where it creates, if it gets a bit lost, it creates this terrifying scream that sounds like it's coming out of, I don't know, it's like the film, the ring, if you've seen that or something, it's pretty airy.

It's a [01:04:00] massive global experiment. I still think it's in a very niche bubble as well, right? This is not like it's, it's, it's mass market, um, in its, in its adoption or utility. It's also a bit wizard of Oz, right? There's a lot of people, there's a lot of humans behind the scenes being on this stuff right now as well, teaching, training, retraining.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think one thing to recognize is the survivorship bias that happens with this stuff. Um, it reminds me a bit of those sort of game shows. I think it was the generation game where they got like an expert in cake making to make a cake and they do it brilliantly. And then the people on the show would try and make a cake and they do it very badly or it was a pot.

Often there are flaws that a technology person can't see, but someone that actually knows how that world works can see, and often the [01:05:00] people going around saying, this is going to take the job. of architects or graphic designers or movie makers is, you know, those are people that are simply demonstrating they don't understand what these jobs involve.

They're simply understanding that they don't understand the economics of how an industry works, um, which is not to say this isn't transformative, but I think most of the things that people are using it to be done and most of the discourse is, it's quite naive, to be honest. Yeah, I, you know, as an innovator, I like the experimental part of this, this global experimentation and learning and figuring out, which I guess is what we've been doing with a number of these hypes.

Um, conversation, I'm going to end [01:06:00] it with a, you said, you know, people may think that I. I'm either an optimist or or the opposite side of that coin. I think you are an inherent optimist in all of this. Maybe you, maybe you agree. Maybe you don't. What is it? What is it? What is it that gives you that greatest course for hope?

Um, I think that there's never been, there's never been a greater creator of value and lever for humanity to accomplish more than technology. Um, and we have the best technology we've ever had, and we have more imagination and more resource than ever before. So we, we will create problems and we will exacerbate some existing problems, but net net, [01:07:00] um, unleashing the power of human potential and creating lots and lots of value and wealth.

can only be a good thing for the world. Um, we now have the internet and cheap mobile devices, and that means that anyone anywhere on the planet, um, can pretty much read and learn about absolutely anything. Um, anyone on the planet could decide to learn a new language, could figure out how to code, um, can interrogate, chat GPT and learn about anything as long as they Um, you can't really imagine a better scenario to propel us to greater things than knowing that anyone with curiosity can become anything.

Well, I think we leave it there, Tom. I know you're very busy and you're traveling the world in part of your, your wisdom and your maybe contrarian views on, uh, on Facebook. Keep doing it. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your time. I massively appreciate it. I'm definitely on board with unleashing the power of human potential, anyone, anywhere in the world.

As you know, that's very true to my heart. [01:08:00] So thanks. And I hope we can connect and speak again. And for everyone listening, thank you very much. As always, we appreciate your time. If you've enjoyed this, please hit subscribe for future episodes. As I've already alluded to, we have some great guests coming up following Tom later in the year.

And Tom, all the best. Travel safe. My pleasure. Thank you, everyone.

People on this episode

Simon Hill

Host