[MUSIC PLAYING]
The pioneering firm
Innovator's DNA, which
was co-founded by Clay Christensen,
Hal Gregersen, and Jeffrey Dyer,
conducted a study over many years of
whether or not successful innovators
shared any common traits.
After researching over
1,600 firms and individuals,
they boiled it down
to five common skills
that all of these innovative
firms and individuals share.
The first is experimenting, something
that we also encounter in music.
Whether it's through songwriting
or in the recording studio.
The guitar pioneer Les Paul
is famous for having pioneered
all kinds of recording techniques,
including multI-tracking,
or new ways of recording
the guitar and new voicings,
through this constant
process of experimentation.
So much of our upbringing
in our generation
has been about congratulating
success based on getting it right
or getting it wrong, and
that happens at childhood.
And I think that if we can encourage
people with a pat on the back
when you put effort, when you've worked
hard, when the process of achievement--
whether or not it is exactly
what you wanted it to be--
can be encouraged as
much as the product.
Encouraging the making to think
versus the thinking to make,
you'll arrive at an incredible solution.
And you'll have learned all these things
along the way that are so priceless.
I have all these sort of
development processes that I do.
So I'll literally go in
there and just start, like,
scrolling through software
instruments, and playing
whatever happens, and then I go, oh,
that's cool, and then I record it.
So it's generated by the
sound of the instrument,
and there's all kinds
of ways to sort of spark
yourself to let go of trying to
control or-- I'm writing a song now,
and have it be a little
bit more playful.
It's like, if you've ever-- I'm
sure you've watched a little kid.
You know how they just
pick up two things
and they try to put them together, and
if they can't they just throw them down
and pick up two more things?
That's kind of what I do.
In a very-- a little bit more adult way.
Another skill that successful innovators
share is the process of networking.
They're really good at developing
communities and friendships.
Think of a musician like Miles Davis,
who was able to endlessly reinvent
himself and whether it's on albums
like Bitches Brew, or Kind of Blue,
by effectively going out there and
getting a number of different musicians
to come together, and
through the process
of collaboration come up with something
absolutely unique and different.
Entrepreneurs are good at not so
much selling people a concept,
but getting people to want
to be part of something.
Yeah.
It's so important for
the project that you're
building to be about them, as well.
Because a lot people, like, in
Berkeley as well, are like, yeah,
I'm trying to make a band.
So I'm going to pay my musician.
It's not about that.
Like, they really have to believe
in your mission and your vision.
The third skill is questioning.
Well, isn't all music an act of
rebellion, challenging authority,
and wanting to put an
imprint on the world
through the act of your own expression?
When I very first started in the
kitchen, I was extremely young
and I remember this one chef-- they all
used to tell me certain things, right?
You can't do it like that.
You have to do it like this.
And I would always say, well,
what happens if I do it like this,
and they'd say, no, no, no, no, no.
You have to do it like that.
There was one chef that
said something to me.
He said, you can't set
pineapple juice into jelly.
I said, come on, guys,
of course you can.
And finally they gave me a reason.
They said, no, there's an enzyme.
I said, but listen.
It has to be possible.
So the following day, I
came in, it was my day off,
and eight or nine hours later, I took
a container, threw it across the bench,
and I said, pineapple jelly.
And they're like, how did you do that?
And I said, I don't know,
that's not the question.
I said the question is,
how many things are you
telling me that can't be done
that can actually be done?
That really taught me that just
because it's done that way,
doesn't mean it has to be done that way.
The other skill set that
successful innovators
and successful, groundbreaking musicians
share is what we call association.
Think of a band like the Beatles hearing
Indian music through Ravi Shankar
and incorporating that into
their own music on an album
like Sgt. Pepper and the song
"Within You Without You."
Fusing Indian music with rock
music, associating the two,
and creating something entirely
unique and entirely different.
I mean, you think about Mark Ronson
in that Amy Winehouse record.
I mean, first you have Amy
Winehouse and it's retro,
but it also sounds so unique.
It's probably because of her
voice, and her vocal style,
and her lyrics which
are-- but you see it's
a combination, because if she had just
been singing about ooh, I love him,
and ooh, this, and ooh, that it would've
been too much of a copy of the '50s,
early '60s girl group stuff.
But because of her gritty
sensibility and her weird voice,
it turned into something else.
The last skill set that successful
innovators have is observation.
Nothing of Marvin Gaye
is what's going on.
Marvin Gaye was moved by the
environment and the changes that
were happening in American
society during the Vietnam War.
So the process of observation is
both critical in company building,
as well as in the creative process,
and yet another commonality
that we see between the two.
