Total Innovation Podcast

21: John Winsor: Think Differently, Embrace Open

• The Infinity Loop • Season 2 • Episode 21

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John is currently the executive-in-residence at Harvard Business School’s Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH), which studies AI and Workforce Transformation strategies, and founder and CEO of Open Assembly, a company that provides content, community, and strategic advising to organizations, people, and platforms to co-create the future of work.

Recently, he has been leading a global industry coalition made up 4000 global leaders in the open talent and innovation industry to start a non-profit trade association, The Center for the Transformation of Work with the goal of Transforming work for a billion people by 2025.

In his past life, John was the chief innovation officer of Havas, when Havas purchased his open advertising agency, Victors & Spoils, in 2015. Winsor founded V&S after introducing the advertising world to the practice of co-creation in his role as vice president and executive director of strategy and innovation at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. Winsor had merged his company Radar Communications, the world’s leading open strategy and research company, with CP+B back in 2007. Other companies Winsor founded include Sports & Fitness publishing, sold to Conde Nast, and the Gravity Games, sold to NBC.

John's most recent book was, “Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Crowd to Solve Your Biggest Challenges,” published by Harvard Business Press.

He is also the author of “Beyond the Brand,” “Spark,” “Flipped,” and the best-selling “Baked In,” winner of the 2009 800-CEO-READ Business Book Award in marketing. Winsor is also an advisor to the Digital Initiative at Harvard Business School, and a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, Forbes and Digiday.

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

Welcome to another episode of the Total Innovation podcast. This chapter or this this episode is one we've attempted to record a few times, and life and fate and Internet disruptions and other things have have got in the way of this. But I'm excited to, hopefully today, get a, an episode in the can that I've been looking forward to doing with a good friend of the show for quite some time. Rather than a long introduction to a friend, an entrepreneur, a very successful entrepreneur, a disruptor, someone that I admire greatly who has advised and helped me along the journey that I've I've been on and continue to be on across the whole spectrum of open innovation, open talent, crowd, and open business models. I'd love to welcome to the show, John Windsor. John, welcome. Hey. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks so much, Simon. Good to be here. Good. Hopefully, we've got some stable connection today. So Yeah. Let's hope so. Some of these some of these episodes are quite tightly structured. You and I talk quite a lot, and, you know, we bounce around a lot of a lot of different topics around the the power of open, right, and and and open business models. As I said, I I learned a lot from you, and and our story goes back quite a few years now. But maybe before we get there, maybe you can tell your story and how you how you found your way into this this wild west world of open network business model. Thanks. Thanks so much, Simon. So I yeah. It's been a long journey. I was thinking about, you know, I think I'll tell a different story than I did the last time just because I think it's it's probably better a better story, and you and I had so many more conversations. You know, my journey started a long time ago, and as as many of us, you know, in our twenties who are ambitious, I wanted to do big things. I started a little sports magazine called Sports and Fitness Publishing here in Boulder, Colorado. And my wife was a professional triathlete, and I had this opportunity to buy this magazine called Women's Sports and Fitness out of out of bankruptcy. And, it meant that I had to put everything I had on the line, like my house and and everything else to buy it out. So, you know, I I needed some advice, and I went out to Nike. And at the time, Mark Parker, who eventually became CEO and Tinker Hatfield, who's the, you know, creative genius behind Nike, they were mid level guys. And I asked them, well, what do you think? You know? This is mid eighties. And and, I said, do you think when we'll do sports? And and, they said, yeah. Yeah. I I definitely do. We'll we'll run an ad with you. You definitely gotta start this mag you gotta restart this magazine. And so, you know, it meant a lot of soul searching on how do I it wasn't really an effort of, like, is the market right? Because I knew if I could get the costs right, I could make it work. And so the big thing that I did, and and it was a radical shift in magazine publishing, is that Time Inc owned women's sports and fitness at the time, and they had forty editors and writers. So imagine that, you know, a a writer would come to Boulder, Colorado to interview a climber like a rock climber like Lynn Hill to write about the article. The the issue with that for a lot of magazines is that, you know, the writer in New York is not a subject matter expert. And so she comes out and talks to Lynn, and she doesn't get all the facts right. And and then it and then then the outcome is is that the magazine is just not very authentic. You know, people that really do those sports are all of a sudden saying, you know, it's nice, but it's from a New Yorker's perspective or it's from a, you know, outsider's perspective and doesn't know the nuances. So I decided because of the economic reasons to flip the paradigm, I actually hired two good editors of both athletes, moved them to Boulder, got rid of the thirty eight other folks. And then what I did is I had the the the readers, the the, like, people like Lynn Hill write their own stories and then just had editors that knew how to edit the story for the audience. So it just seeped with insider info and and really deep knowledge, and and that flip really made it work. And so all of a sudden, we went from a money losing magazine that was draining my bank account to one that was making money, and and that really kinda set the tone for women's sports and fitness women's sports going forward. So I got to be involved with that crazy, you know, that the the culmination of with working with the Women's Sports Foundation of, you know, the rise of women's football, the rise of women's basketball. It was a really great, great time. I built the company to be, you know, ten magazines and about two hundred people based on the same principle. Let's have our readers do the writing and then have our editors just edit the magazines. And it worked really, really well. I called that cocreation, and I sold that company to Conde Nast. And what I was interested in is this idea of cocreating with customers deep in marketplaces. It was such a new concept back in, like, you know, the late nineties, and nobody really did it. So I started a company called Radar Communications and wrote a few books. I wrote two books on cocreation at the time, and it was all about that. Like, how do you go out and and cocreate with your customers? And we had a research and strategy company in the innovation space. That's where I was squarely in. We helped Nike and Levi's and, GM and Intel and and HP, a bunch of global companies. And the basis of our of our philosophy was not to do folks groups that were out of context, but go into people's closets or in people's rooms and do video ethnography. That seems de rigueur these days, but back then, it was such a new thing. And and that worked really well as well. And so we had all this momentum, and, this guy, by the name of Alex Bogusky came to to Boulder who was, you know, a bit of a savant in the advertising business. Small agency had about a hundred people. And we started riding bikes, and I was frustrated because I was selling radar communications, my my research and strategy company to, to WPP globally, and it just wasn't going that well. I'm not a big company guy. And so Alex and I decided to merge our companies. His company was called Chrisman Porter Bogusky. We went on this crazy we we put cocreation at the center of the strategy for the agency, and we went on a crazy run for we went three billion dollars worth of business globally. Microsoft, Domino's, Volkswagen, Burger King, Coke, Miller, and became the global the creative go let's see. What is it? The creative, the global creative agency of the decade and really seen as pushing the envelope on a lot of creative stuff. But a lot of us just fueled by insights or even, you know, letting customers be in commercials and really connecting with them, to to allow this kind of ecosystem to grow. So that was super interesting. You know, I got into, the idea of crowds that were not ours, you know, customers because we ran out of people. Like, we went from a hundred of us to twelve hundred of us in in two years, which was a crazy ride. And we kept winning this business, and we won this small, electric motorcycle company. And the crazy thing was is so we didn't have any creative to work on it. So Alex and I I came up with this idea of, like, let's crowdsource the creative. And and as you can imagine, if you're the, you know, global creative agency of the decade, the idea of crowdsourcing creative to the advertising industry, which was so parochial and and arrogant about who who's gets to be creative, who doesn't, It totally blew everything up. And and and the crazy thing that we noticed, you know, and I think you probably noticed in in the work that you guys do is that because it's this, you know, project based, you know, like, focused on interesting things, you know, the the the creative director we tried to hire from London, but her husband had a big banking job, and she wouldn't move to Boulder or, you know, the really hot young creative in Australia who was a who was surfer, didn't really wanna come to the mountains. All of a sudden, they were doing work for us for marginal cost, variable cost. Right? So we didn't have to worry about hiring them, move them across the globe, not being good fit. And that worked out really, really well. So I started a company called Victors and Spoils, which which is an ad agency based on crowdsourcing principles. And from an entrepreneur, it was one of the craziest rides because, you know, we had this concept. And three of us in the garage, and we built everything, but we I'd reached an agreement with Stuart Elliott from the New York Times that we wouldn't launch the company until we, you know, until they did an article about us. And they were nice enough to do a three quarter page article about our launch. And, literally, we started the morning with three of us in the garage, bank account getting sucked dry. And by twelve hours later, we had three thousand people sign up to do work for us. And Dish Network, the satellite provider, gave us their hundred and ten million dollar advertising business, about a fifteen million dollar creative fees from zero to fifteen million in in in twelve hours. And it was quite the run, but that ended up, you know, causing quite a stir in the advertising business. And I joined Havas in Paris as chief innovation officer, which was really great. But I think, you know, what we see and what you and I have talked so much about is, like, even the best ideas. You know, we know from all the work that I've done at Harvard and NASA that that that works produced, you know, as good or better results four to five times faster, eight to ten times cheaper. But it's the mid layer of most organizations that are that on the demand side that have such a struggle with this. Like, what does it do for my job? Like, what does it do for my ego? How am I gonna look if somebody comes in as a solver off the you know, out of out of kinda left field or out of the world? And and that kinda led me you know, Harvard got took note and and started doing following me around and did a case study on victors and spoils being born open, and Havas changed faster. It was a debacle at Havas. The CEO got fired. I got fired. You know, we were doing this too entrepreneurial. I ended up being at Harvard, and now I've for eight years, it's been amazing. Right? Eight years. It's been a long time since you and I connected those first few years. But eight years, I've been studying this stuff and trying to come up models, and and, obviously, that's what, you know, I did with the book, Open Talent, is try to figure out what are the models that I've been using for a long time that, you know, you've been using that how do we take this so it's it's ordinary and boring for the organizational side of things. Right? So companies can can say, oh, there's a Harvard methodology. I don't have to be so scared. And, you know, it's been a long road to hoe, but I was just back there last week, and I'm amazed some of the what I would call institutionalists, you know, professors that are kind of very dyed in the wool, you know, doing things along for the for a long time the same way, all of a sudden in conversations with me, we're like, well, I think this whole open thing might have some legs, especially in the a in in the age of AI and this idea of of the democratization of expertise. So I I don't sorry for the long intro. You can you can No. But that's that that that folks is the reason I didn't do the introduction because I could never do that thing justice. And, that's that's the paraphrased version as well and not not just because there's a few years passed between in there, but because all of it it's so goddamn impressive as well. Right? I think really, really early adopting, really early disrupting. But, also, I I guess, my reflection on that is, as you've just said, I feel like we we might be reaching a paradigm moment. We might not be as well. Right? You know, there's a lot of Yeah. There's a lot of proof. There's a lot of data. There's a lot of evidence. Right? And and you continue to do the work through Harvard, and you continue to, you know, to produce great great books like the open talent book and and and others and and language and literature around networked ecosystems. If we do go, well, this might be a a moment in time that goes again. All the all the legacy, all the hard work, all the luck, all the all the data points sort of set a foundation? Like, what is it that might be different this time, do you think, that might you mentioned AI and maybe that's part of the factor, but, like, what is it that's driving perhaps that paradigm moment, and what might that mean from an organizational perspective? Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm a pretty simple guy, and and I try to keep things really you know, my framework's really simple. And the the thing I always come back to is in in highly disruptive times. Right? The best thing any organization, whether they're a three person organization or a thirty thousand person organization, they have to have a really strong balance sheet. You've gotta have some, you know, some powder in the barrel to make sure that you can get to the future. Well, in order to do that, the best way to do that is to move more fixed cost to variable costs. And if you're gonna do that, then the best thing to do is, you know, the the place that most fixed costs are from most organizations is the labor. And so I think you'll see a big shift from labor. Now I think in the context of AI and what we're seeing is that that's not gonna be all human labor. It's gonna be human and synthetic labor. I've been hearing some really astounding stories. I mean, there's so many out there. But when I heard the other night, I was giving a speech to a bunch of talent professionals, and they work with Amazon. And they they say, you know, they've been supplying labor for Amazon at a lower level to do, text customer service, and they know the cost of that engagement is about eight dollars. Amazon has just replaced that with an AI, you know, customer service solution that is ten ten percent better is quality from the customers and, you know, radically fast and radically scaled, and it costs five cents. So you've got eight dollars to five cents. And I I think the future is gonna be those providers that can help companies taskify the work that needs to be done. And I think in your case, it's innovation. Right? I mean, Ian and Sean Shoney and I had a great conversation the other day about this. Like, I think the reality is is anytime, or at least you and I have observed the same things. Right? Most large companies are really nervous about change, and so we saw this in the open talent space. Right? It's like we know statistically, like I said, from the NASA research that is better, faster, and cheaper, that that solutions kind of are really you know, there's a lot less friction. Yet organizations just aren't built for that, and so they they put up roadblocks and barriers and try to protect an analog way of working. And and my sense is is that AI is coming so fast. You know, there's a some great new BCG research that says that, you know, fourteen hundred c, c level folks they've interviewed, eighty nine percent said Gen AI is a top three priority, but ninety percent of them say that it it's it's you know, they're still observers. And so I think what we're gonna see is we're gonna see that that, you know, there's gonna be more and more pressure on the board and the CEO level down to say what's our AI solution. And the quickest way to have an AI solution is to say, oh, I I work with Simon in innovation. You know, we we use the Wazoku platform, and there are they they're driving, AI through our innovation process. Just by using their platform, I know I've got I've got that solution. I mean, it's just those changes are just too scary for organizations to to be able to, you know, to to metabolize themselves. Right? Which which LLM do I pick? What pathway do I pick? Things are changing so fast that it's to build an analog structure around something like that, just have us disintegrate three weeks later is is really difficult. Yeah. I was I was thinking about this this recently because I did an exercise on Wazoku, four Wazoku that was looking really at what doesn't change and what are the some of the fundamentals and then what might change, right, and what potentially, what needs to change as well. And I think that there's aspects of what makes a good business that will always be true. Right? Then there are and at the at the heart and soul of all of that, you know, there are sort of very basic fundamentals of of you need, you know, you need to build great products in some way. You need to sell and market those great products against some level of of of brand and quality differentiation. You need to make sure that you do those and make as much profit as you can in your in your margin, and then you need a whole bunch of other operational stuff that'll help make the business work. Right? So kind of simple and rudimentary. I was looking at this again, like, is innovation even really a thing? Right? Clearly, there clearly, there's inputs, throughputs, outputs. But, ultimately, if the objective is to maximize and unlock maybe new forms of business value, maybe that's what we want to describe as as innovation. I'm not super precious about about the definition because I think it it doesn't have to be net new either. Right? But we're trying to unlock business value. What does that mean? Well, it goes back to the sales and marketing aspects of that or the r and d aspects, which might be called innovation or or engineering or or something or something else or the risk aspects. Right? We wanna diminish risk in some way in some way, shape, or form. And then you talked about the taskification of work. And I think that that somewhere we get lost in all this language. Right? So we have this idea of what is innovation and what is it not. Like, what is the future of work? I think people roll their eyes when they hear too many of these things. And perhaps because they're unimportant or because perhaps they're super important, and we've just broken them in our in our thinking too much. I know you're doing some work at Harvard's d cube school, and maybe you can talk about what their what that what that d cube is and and maybe some of the things that you you see coming out of there and whether you know, is it new language around this? Is it revisiting old language? Is does it need to be rethought in a totally different way, or is it really kind of small tweaks and iterations on top of, I don't know, perpetual truisms about just how business works. Right? And we we we as a species like to overcomplicate it. Yeah. I mean, I think it comes back to that principle. Right? If you don't like change, you don't you you'll like irrelevance even even less. And and so, you know, I think a lot of organizations are right in that in that space right now. Right? They need to figure out. One of the things I'm you know, I I think one of the things that's interesting in the Harvard work is that because of the Harvard brand, it it it it gets the attention of c level folks, and the ability to cause organizational change from the c level suite is really is is really inspiring to me. I I think that's part of it. I mean, I think, you know, we've seen all this kind of bottom up usage of open talent tools and open innovation tools and and now AI. Right? Twenty five percent of all of us, probably more than that, are using it on a daily basis. Yet organizations, you know, are just just unwilling to go down the road of, like, how do I how do I adopt this? Or that and it's just scary. Right? And so that's that's the place that that Harvard's playing is what does it mean? How how do how do how does how do the classes or how do the the the research and the process create a sense of tension, right, I would say, even fear. Like, this is happening. Here are the the here are the the tools, and here's what's happening. And coupled with a safe and secure way to go forward, like, advice to say, hey. It might be scary out there, but, you know, we've we've figured out a way, mister, you know, c level person in a big company, to help you go forward in a new way. And, you know, honestly, I I find it really fascinating is that the power of a of that brand is almost a a hammer that the c level can use. And it's one thing to use, you know, a a consulting company like a Deloitte or an Accenture to drive change. But that's pretty. Right? And and but if you can, you know, get the attention of the right people at Harvard and they can help drive the change, it it it's it's just a lot it's really fascinating being inside there and watching how big organizational leaders pay such attention to that and then and then are willing to drive change to keep that connection. Because one of the things that's so crazy to me about Harvard is they they have so much momentum. They just get really disinterested. If you're a c level guy and you you say, I wanna, you know, come in and do all these really interesting things and study these interesting things and, you know, your mid level data guy can't provide the data for whatever reason, you know, whether it's, you know, concern about, you know, their own career or whatever. But if it Harvard just doesn't get in you know, they're just not interested. Like, ah, sorry. Here's your money back. We're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna we're we're not involved. We're not gonna be involved in that. And it's it it and I think that kind of scarcity you know, I think there's a real interesting thing going on. Right? It's like I think that there's a lot more power and scarcity now in in this world of kind of ubiquitous abundance. You know, I was thinking about this in the thought leadership area. Right? It's like everybody has a point of view on LinkedIn. And when when everybody knows that the algorithm is gonna, you know, pay attention to DeepSeek and its reaction, every person in the world has to write their opinion about what DeepSeek's gonna do, you know, to whatever marketplace it is. And and it well, it's interesting. It's just the amount of noise is incredible compared to the signal. And I think that really applies to what you guys are doing. Right? It's like I you know, the ability to have a trusted partner that can help sort through the noise and find the signal is really, really difficult. That that's what I've loved about our conversations is usually the stories that you tell me about working with clients are that. Like, they've tried really hard to solve some kind of problem. It's been really difficult. They've canvassed the world, but they need an outside perspective. They need a a trusted partner that can sort this kind of noise in into signal really, really quickly. And so so I my sense is is that that's what makes that place so magical. It's it's such a scare scarce research sorry. It's such a scarce resource, and the ability to kinda tap into it is is very difficult, and so it makes it that much more valuable. And so that's that's part of, like, the the the signaling of change, and I think that's super important. And then I thought it was super interesting. Like, Kareem McConney is teaching, an RC, a required course for the first time. It's the first new required course change in twenty five years. And that course is AI and data. And so every every first year, MBA student now has to take a required course on AI and data, and and I think it's a it's a great thing. You know? Well, I think Harvard feels like, at least from a brand, that they're kind of old and and stuffy and changes slowly. You know? I I've been I'm gonna teach a class at Denver University this, you know, this semester and in just a a couple day seminar, and they don't have any policies. And they don't know what they're doing. They're not teaching anything about it. It's just the wild west. And so I think the ability to kind of you know, the great thing about Harvard is that the ability to get attention for whatever, you know, the the the framework is and and create some momentum around that is really important. So the effort right now that Kareem's doing and and a lot of others are just studying this kind of democratization of expertise. What does it mean? How does it work? But getting deep in with companies and doing experiments, just finished a big experiment that's that's public on, the, you know, the changes of AI as they as they look at consulting, the consulting business. And BCG partnered with that, really willing to kind of show the results publicly on what's it mean to have a a consultant alone do projects qualitative and quantitative, and then what's it mean to have, you know, a a consultant with AI and then an AI only. And and what what we saw in the results was that, you know, AI only and and and human and AI is is is up there, and consultants by themselves kind of they have lost their edge. Yeah. Yeah. But what's really interesting is that and I think this really points to the power of of what you guys are doing is that it wasn't that AI was that much better, especially for things, outside of frontier, like new things. Right? Like, still human ability to do things outside that frontier is is really important. But but when somebody when a lower level person used AI, they often beat somebody they they they most of time beat somebody that was more experienced without AI. And so I think there's this ability for people inside an organization with less experience to do more. And I think what you'll see in the context of open innovation is by giving, you know, crowd members or or team members inside the Wazoku crowd the ability to use AI tools. It's it's a superpower. It's a like, when a company buys Wazoku, they're not buying Wazoku anymore. They're buying super wasoku, which means that every solver has in the system the ability to use an AI to help partner and solve problems. Still down to human judgment for those nuances and those those kind of new insights. But I'm I'm seeing that that's probably the paradigm. Right? It's almost like an Ironman suit that we all get to put on when we go on our our our computers to solve problems and and create new things. Yeah. Talk talk a little bit about that, and I I agree with you. And we spend a lot of time, actually, not so much time upfront debating what our policy was, and my policy was that, you know, let's let AI be in the loop, but make sure it's in the loop. Right? It can't be exclusively that because anyone could do that. Right? And Right. There is an argument that says, well, anyone could do it, but not anyone will do it, but that's not really relevant for me. There's an element of novel, and an element of, I guess, human thoughts that needs to go into the type of work that we're trying to bring and do that requires a human in the loop, you know, probably more than fifty one percent, right, of that that that effort to to be there. But the augmented with that makes absolute sense. It's like having a, you know, a multifaceted team alongside you without having to have a have a multifaceted team alongside you. But you just talk a bit. So you you journeyed we've gone around your career. The one area we didn't spend much time talking about is the work you're doing with Open Assembly and this, you know, this network piece, which I know overlaps with the work at Harvard and everything else. But maybe talk a little bit around that and the general evolution as you see it of this human synthetic open talent marketplace? Yeah. So I you know, Open Assembly has been on this great journey, and we started, you know and you were involved with it. We started early on. We had a, you know, we had a small group of folks that met on a regular basis during COVID, kinda blew the doors off that and made it very public and created these kind of regular weekly calls. And I think, you know, I think all of us needed that at the time. You know, we were lonely. We're in our houses alone, and we needed that connection. You know, what I've what I've what I've found lately, back to that kind of awareness, you know, is that it's time to get to work. You know? It's like, let's let's change behavior. Let's do things because so many people are just talking about things, spewing new ideas. It's really hard to sort kind of the wheat from the chaff. Right? Yep. And so, you know, what what I've been doing at at Open Assembly is still you know, we're not doing these kind of free monthly calls anymore that, you know, had a lot of great people. And And there were really fun conversations, but it didn't feel like we were doing anything. Right? It's like, oh, there's lots of great stuff on the latest research and what's happening. Our real focus now is, like, how do we get aggregate the smartest people in the world? How do we hold, you know, some events at Harvard to connect them with the best researchers? And then together, how do we figure out in a in a trusted, more closed, you know, more scarce environment, some real operating principles that can help change the way things get done. Because I don't think there's enough there's enough there's enough there's not enough action right now. Right? It's back to that BCG, you know, level of, yeah, the, you know, the the, you know, the there's a lot of awareness and this is an important strategy, but yet no nobody's doing anything. I think somebody told me this funny thing that said that, you know, OpenAI besides NVIDIA, OpenAI has had the, you know, most revenue growth, right, in in kind of this this space because of of their wild success of their LLM. But from a percentage standpoint, guess who has had the second largest revenue gain percentage wise? Any any guesses? Pardon me? Microsoft? No. It's been Accenture. Oh, really? Accenture because everybody in the world needs a needs a, you know, their AI their AI strategy deck. Now that doesn't mean anything's getting done. Yeah. You know, it it means that a lot of lot of chairs are moving, you know, moving on on the deck, and people are feeling good because they can report up the line with a new deck to, you know, get get a blue button. And I I I don't know about you, but I'm just in that place in my life. We're like, enough already on the next deck. Right? Let's get some let's build some shit. And I think that's that's to me, that's the one of the great things terrifying. Right? Terrifying for large companies that are used to going through this process. You know, we all have an opinion on Elon Musk, and I I find him, you know, an enigma in so many ways and disturbing in a lot of ways. But one thing I really respect about him as a CEO is he sees himself as a chief problem solver. And so he goes into an organization, one of his organizations, let's say Tesla. Well, let's let's say XAI. And, you know, instead of going through and saying, well, what what's slowing us down and talking to his, you know, executive board who goes out to the VPs, who go out to, you know, the head of engineering who goes out to the engineer, and then three weeks later or two months later comes back with a deck to Elon going here are the problems we've analyzed and here are three solutions. You know, Elon just walks down to the engineer and says, what's the problem? And, you know, let's just say, in this case, engineer will say, we just don't have enough NVIDIA GPUs. You know, Elon picks up the phone, calls Jensen, and says, hey. I need some more GPUs over here this afternoon. Can you give them to me? And, you know, and I'll pay whatever you need, and the problem is solved. And so I think that's part of it. Right? It's like, how do we how do we do how do we have more action and less talk? And I think that's really where the these open ecosystems really work. Right? I mean, I I don't know about you, but, you know, my experience is when I need something like, you know, help with a deck or help on something, I call one of my trusted freelancers to help me out on it. It's not like I have to go through, you know, bureaucracy to make sure that somebody's, you know, like, has space in their job or they're they, you know, they're traveling that day or they're on vacation. Like, the world's abundant. You can get that talent really, really quickly and get the get the work done. So so I would suggest that part of, you know, looking forward is it's it's like how do we help organizations? How do organizations have faster cycles? Right? Turn things in a much, much quicker way to get the results they need. Because time is the enemy. Right? Time is the enemy of innovation. You let things lag and the world changes, and you miss the you miss the window of opportunity. Yeah. I was thinking about this. I've you know, we've I've done a load of these podcasts now. I was talking recently to the former head of innovation at, PayPal, and we were, you know, we were chewing through some of the things that he'd seen and done inside that organization. And part of that narrative was looking at the, you know, the sort of IP pipeline and the development of of things that that that that he himself is not an engineer. You know, he came into innovation via a different route and, yeah, had a number of design patents against his name that had really built his profile internally using, you know, open tools. And I think that for some people, there's still gonna be a career path that goes into a company and spends a lifetime there. Right? For sure. For other people, there may be a career path that never does that, right, and and and finds ways. And most people will be somewhere in between. Right? It may be corporate people. They may be not. But there is definitely a change in that narrative. But within all of it, I think what's unequivocal, obviously, I'm very biased because I, you know, I live and breathe it all day, is that the open approach is better than the closed approach always. Yep. Right? Yep. And the the brilliance of people will surprise you, and the brilliance of people plus AI will probably surprise you even more than, than than that. I do think there's a big skills piece to that. But even that, I think, can be a bit overblown sometimes. It's like, if you ask people, they surprise you, generally. And we're just not very good at asking people. What do you what I'm gonna flip us a little bit into looking forward therefore. Right? You know? And maybe maybe, you know, you haven't got another startup in you now and you're building things that you're doing, but, like, is the future open? And what what should leaders be thinking about in terms of the, I guess, you know, the future of work and the the future of of how value might be unlocked and created inside organizations going forward, do you think? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, hey. You know, organizations, at least the organizations we know today, we're all built in a time of of scarcity, you know, built on, you know, Peter Drucker's, you know, great work and and and, you know, Jim Collins' great work. But all those paradigms are about, like, you know, you have scarce resources. You gotta find that one engineer that you gotta hire them and gonna go through that process. You gotta find that one resource with the right minerals to get to, you know, delivered here at the right time. And because we've taken off you know, we've we've created technology that's kind of removed all these frictions, especially communication frictions, you know, that that all of a sudden things are so rapid and the price has become so low that that it's much easier to do things. And so you don't need that kind of highly skilled person that could go find that one thing. You need an abundance of of of of stuff. So my sense is that organizations are gonna get a lot smaller. You know, there's all this mythology or memes around, you know, the one person billion dollar company, and I think that's really possible. I think that, you know, like I said, you know, strong balance sheets, flexibility, the ability to pivot really quickly. And organizational structures are gonna be digital, and digital are all is all about community, aggregating people around a problem really, really quickly, whether that's, you know, creating a following on social media or solving a business problem. Those things are really interesting. The one thing I I did this thought exercise the other day, and and I think we all forget how much innovations happen. Right? So I was thinking back, and I was I was at Boeing for a meeting, and they play this great video when you go in as a visitor. And they show this idea that, you know, in in the late, I guess, you know, maybe even early, you know, twentieth century, the idea of getting a letter from New York to Anchorage, Alaska took five months because you had to put that letter on a ship. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, planes came along, and then it got down to five hours. And then today, with an email, it's it's zero. And so the cost of communication is radically reduced. I also did this other thought exercise. I'm sure it's something you've done, but I was thinking about what's the you know, on our phones, like, what what would be the cost of all the materials we have on our phones? You know, like, if we you know, we pay a thousand dollars for these phones, but, you know, it's estimated with the books and the access to information and the music and everything, it's between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff. That would actually be two moving vans if you had to carry it around. Yeah. And so and so those are kind of radical shifts. And Yeah. While we're able to adopt that personally in a really good way, I don't think companies are really geared to that. So I see two things. You know? One is innovators doing the good work to push the boundaries and do new things. But the real work is, like, how does that get adopted? Where how does that get, you know, implemented and metabolized inside organizations? And one of the things that I'm really impressed with lately at Harvard, I just connected with Bharat Anand, who is head of strategy. He and I did some work together early on. He did a case on me. And then I helped him build HBX, which is the precursor to HBSO, Harvard Business School online. So we built HBX, and we built Harvard Business School online. And then he became vice provost, and we built Harvard online. And so taking the whole university online. And one of the things I'm just in awe of with Bharat is his ability to be super innovative inside a very conservative, not, you know, changing environment or unchangeable environment. And it's because he knows all the pathways, and he knows exactly how to build consensus and build momentum and tell a story in a really good way. So I I think folks inside organizations need to be better storytellers Yeah. Better better ability to build, you know, consortions or or movements, but then relying on external talent, whether it's synthetic or human, to actually do a lot of the the the the heavy lifting of the executional work. But it's gonna be more about, you know, the personal relationships and how do I get people to move and and change and create safety and security for those folks. Yeah. So that's my question. You put it earlier, how do you get shit done. Right? I think that's the like It's unbelievable. Lot of talk. There's a lot of content. There's a lot of noise. You're right. I love this. You know, the the the concepts of of signal to noise, and and there is just a lot of noise out there. And I think that maybe in this, you know, hyperbole around AI, that's the thing that I think is I'm most excited about is it if you find a way to use it well with the right level of data, And that isn't necessarily large language models. I think that the the interesting shift now as these models get more specialized and smaller, having trained on top of a bigger model, is the power comes actually from from distilling the noise, getting away with it, really focusing that, that attention on the right things. And that's a challenge when when you've got tools that can just produce more and more and more more noise. Right? More Yeah. More of a context. And I mean, it starts to wind us in, and there's a lot of places we could take this. But the the other area we haven't spoken about so much is the book. Right? So in in all your free time sitting around enjoying when you're not surfing or researching or or or advising or inspiring. You found time over the last couple of years to write the book as well, Open Talent. Maybe just talk a little bit about about that and some of the, you know, the the interesting things that emerged from the writing of that as well. Yeah. Thanks. Wow. It was it was quite journey. You you're along with me the whole way, and and, I have to say, you know, when I looked at the area of open innovation, your your models and your process is definitely by far the most the the most developed and and outstanding processes and certainly once we adopt in the book. But but I think, you know, I I I I've been an entrepreneur, right, all my life, and it works the open talent and open innovation works really well in small company using it as a operational model for that size company. Right? Whether it's fifty people, twenty people, ten people, you know, two people. The problem is is that there there's been historically so much revenue from kind of analog, old ways of working that it's really slow. And so, you know, trying to change the paradigm is really, really hard. You know? I I some people are brilliant at it. Like, Elon Musk just says, I'm gonna commit everything, and I'm gonna be singularly focused on electrifying cars, and I'm just gonna punch it and go for it. But I think for the rest of us, the the mission really is, like, how do we create safety and security and and systems and processes that allow for, you know, people to change their hearts and minds. You know, it's interesting. One of the things that I've been struggling with lately is I I kind of have felt like, you know, Open Talent, the book was it and it is in in in one viewpoint. The the the the digital transformation of talent writ large, like HR and, you know, staffing and outsourcing and and innovation. That presupposes that HR and staffing and outsourcing and innovation talk to each other. And then companies have this total talent strategy. And that's just not the case. Right? Like, we're we're we're we kind of have been talking about in the context of of some of the the things that need to be done before open talent haven't even gotten done yet. So in most organizations, the the theme that I've heard in the research that I've done is that while HR aspires to you know, CHRs aspire to a place where they can be at the sea level seat in a in a in a more substantive way and and understand everybody how work gets done by people or even by AI. But they got distracted after COVID because nobody came back to work and that they had to throw out all their policies. And and the majority of people in the HR world are really focused on compliance and making sure the company doesn't get sued. Right? And so and so they're totally distracted. They're not it's not about, like, getting the work done or doing great work. It's about over here. And so it seems to me that we've gotta focus, and that's where I've I've been really focused on lately is is how do we help organizations with innovation or staffing on the project basis? Like, I need to get work done. Like, I don't have anybody to do it. Like, HR can't hire anybody. How do I do it? Here are some ways. You know, we use a great platform like Ozoku. You know, use another platform to do open talent like Graphite that you're that you're partnering with now. You know, those are really great solutions, and I think that's a world view. It's going pretty well. I think that we we're seeing a lot of movement, you know, but it's slow. Organizations are really nervous about it, and traditional ways of working aren't aren't there yet. I was super impressed just with the momentum. First of all, the adoption of the term up talent. I mean, freelancing is great, you know, but it's very much of a niche and and not a philosophy. Yeah. But, you know, I'm I'm really inspired by the work that Ronstadt's doing. You know, Ronstadt has has taken you know, unlike unlike our buddy, Mike Tushman's, you know, explore exploit, and there are some people that are trying to do that in this kind of staffing industry. We're saying, I'm gonna, you know, open an office in some innovative place and then, you know, learn a bunch of stuff and then bring it back to the center. My hunch is is the world's changing too fast. So I really like what Sanders doing at Ronstadt. His, you know, his message to the whole of Ronstadt's, you know, thirty thousand employees or whatever, how many people they have. He's he his point is, like, look. You remember those things called travel agencies? Do you guys use a travel agent? Well, we're we're just a talent travel agency. So if we don't change, we will be out of business. So this kind of wholesale change that needs to happen. And I I think you're seeing some of the best players in the world start realizing, especially in the motivations AI, to say that it's going way too fast for us to be the expert at everything. We have to have great partners and and connect with people outside the world. So that's been the focus of the book. The book's done well. It's, you know, best seller, and and we sold a lot of copies and it but it's led to a bunch of really other interesting avenues for change in places like Harvard to create new materials and new research that will influence more people. And that's really where I've been focused on is, like, how do we help the demand side feel more safe and secure for these new messages? You know, one of the issues with startups these days is that, you know, as you know, like, anybody with a laptop can start a company, which is awesome. Right? Becomes, again, back to our paradigm earlier. There's so much noise out there, and where's the signal? Who are the people that are really gonna make the difference Yeah. Instead of just talking about making the difference? And I think that's that's part of the issue for companies. Right? They look at the market and they say, we have so many opportunities to work with new kinds of labor models. I don't even know where to go, and how do we focus on the right one. So so that's been a lot of the effort lately. But it's going well, and and, really appreciate partnership with, you you know, you and and all the great work you're doing at Wazoku. Well, listen. Thank you, and, you know, congratulations on a journey to here. I think, you know, many would have, kicked back into retirement and surfing and relaxing and and other things. And, yeah, we're still here fighting the fight, right, and and trying to make sure that that we that we and I think this I wanna I'm gonna, like, maybe ask you for one final closing thought on this. And and maybe a final closing thought on how do you feel now? Right? Do you feel optimistic or or or otherwise about the not the the long term because I think we'll eventually get there, but the shorter term, maybe the next few years horizon about this and whether we'll see a sizable change or not in that really important piece of, like, not talking, not producing content, but actually getting shit done. Right? I mean, that is that is the problem. How do you feel about that? I mean, it's already underway. Right? It's like the companies are are are new companies are being more born every day that are changing the world and and and and rocking things. I don't think there's any stopping that. I think it's only gonna be accelerated with AI, the ability to execute that much faster. You know, my hunch is is there's gonna be a lot of innovation washing going on. Right? Like and I think there's gonna be this this adoption. And so I always look to the advertising industry. It's like, you know, it just blows me away. Right? The advertising industry when I was kinda I was at the tail end of this, but the advertising industry, you know, it was considered radio, TV, out of home, and, you know, and a couple of our smaller things. Right? Print. But there was this big digital thing happening. And these companies like Razorfish and, Sapient all were born because the big advertising agencies didn't think that digital was a thing, and then they didn't think social media was a thing. What's happened is all those agencies still exist, those holding companies. It's just that none of the people that did that work are there, and all the digital people that were kind of these outlaws out to the side are now controlling those companies. So I I think you'll still see organizations that have great brands, you know, that that really have done a good job of focusing on customers still there, but they're gonna be gutted and become digital companies, totally different organizations. And I think that's what you'll see in the short run. I think it's happening really, really quickly every day, and and my only concern is the speed at which the world's changing. Can our society metabolize that? I think we've seen other radical changes in the ability you know, they happen slowly enough that people you know, there could be a drop in employment in one sector, but the rise in employment in another one was was successful. This is just such a radical shift, and and, you know, we're in a place where a lot of people are feeling, let's, you know, let's burn the thing down and and restart. And that that's a really scary thing, I think, for, you know, for society. You know, can we survive that? You know, do our base fundamental, foundational institutions, can they stay stable? And what does that mean for the way the world works? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure I wanna leave us there. It feels a bit existential, but I'm I'm going to. And we're gonna commit to, to pushing out as many and maybe calling out as many of, you know, let's let's let's let's bad innovation washing. I was actually talking to a client today who seven years of their work they'll go unnamed for now, but seven years of their innovation work has been unwound in a call from the CEO. But I start to think about it. My initial reaction was wow, and my my follow-up reaction was, I'm not sure they should have ever done that work to start with. Right? Yeah. It's like, I didn't I wasn't brought in to advise on that. I I've been a part of a small part of a small part of it and constantly pushing for more, right, and and and really trying to to get the organization to truly embrace the things it needed to embrace rather than the things it was doing. But but I think in reality, it just shouldn't have ever been doing those things. And so Right. Because it was another classic, you know, innovation theater or or other things, and and the curtain closes eventually. Right? The theater shows. Yeah. And it's all and I think that's the big message. Right? It's all okay. Like, the world changes. The world changes way more than we think. We we try to desperately, as individuals, hold on to the way things are. All the while, the world's changing really quickly, and I think it's it's it's sort of like you can stand by the stream and be terrified by the speed of the stream, or you can just jump in and let it take you where you're going to go. And and and that's the only way to live. Right? There's no other choice. Too much tension sitting on the on the on the side of the stream. Exactly. Well, you know, let's grab a beer. Let's jump in that stream. Let's see where it takes us. John, thank you, and, thank you so much. Right? Like I said, I've learned a lot from you. This has been a great Thanks. So just chewing through examples. Where can folk find you? Just, you know, john windsor dot com or open, hyphen assembly dot com are the two two easiest place. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm I'm everywhere. But but, again, you know, trying to really focus on more, you know, deeper, you know, change and so not having my head up as much as I've had in the past because I I just I really feel like it's time for all of us to get to work and get deep and and and change things. You know? Yeah. You can find it hanging out with me while we try and get shift done. Right? That's exactly Exactly. Listen. Thank thank you very much. Thank you everyone to listening to this episode. I'm trying to mix these up now and make them not just as formulaic as some are. And so some are structured, some are a bit less so, but, you know, mostly, it's about pulling out the bits. We've had an entrepreneur here who's built, disrupted, changed, was really early in understanding, I think, a very important open movement that, actually, I think you could argue has shaped much of the economies of the world, but just without really thinking about it in that way. As as I said, I think we are involved in something, but we're somewhat still stuck in business models that perhaps are fifty, sixty years now coming to the end of their life cycles and need to be rethought of differently. So keep following John. Thank you very much everybody for listening. Check out historic episodes and also check out the future episodes by hitting subscribe, and we'll see you again next time on the Total Innovation podcast. Thanks. Thanks so much.

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