In this innovative episode, Danny Nathan, Founder and CEO of Apollo 21 LLC, shares how he has built products and executed go-to-market strategies for companies ranging from pre-seed startups to Fortune 100 corporations.
You will discover:
– How to leverage data for innovation (the right way)
– How you need to evolve your ability to innovate as you grow your success
– How to regain your innovative edge if you’ve lost it
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is the one, the only, Danny Nathan, he’s the founder of Apollo 21 a unique company that sits at the intersection of a management consultancy, Product Design Studio and a venture studio. Apollo 21 helps clients foster transformational growth through new venture creation, new product development and the formation of internal venture building operations. They remove barriers to scale by building technology that solves complex business and operational challenges. In doing so, they help organizations rediscover an entrepreneurial spirit and establish a culture of innovation. And he is here with us today. Danny, welcome to the show. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to dive right in. So one of the things that I noticed you had on your site was few different areas that you help, and you had listed both corporate innovation and startup disruption, and one of the patterns that I see, even the most disruptive of startups can struggle to maintain that that innovation over time. So I’m wondering, how do companies need to evolve in their ability to innovate as they grow more successful?
Danny Nathan
So I think that one of the biggest things to bear in mind when it comes to innovation, and one of the things that we look at a lot, are kind of the key metrics that companies are focused on, especially as they continue to grow so often, what we’ll see is, you know, a disruptive startup will hit the scene. They’ll start making a name for themselves. They’ll start, you know, beginning to displace an incumbent. And over time, as those companies find product market fit and begin to kind of grow into their own shoes, if you will, one of the things that happens is they begin to optimize for efficiency. And ultimately, the short answer is, efficiency is the silent innovation killer. And so you know, effectively, what happens is, if we look at the metrics that a lot of companies use to determine how they’re doing, and to focus on creating better shareholder return, and to focus on building that kind of efficiency that helps them ring every dollar out of every penny in ultimately, what happens is they begin to limit the opportunities for innovation, and really they begin building a culture that suppresses kind of the weird, experimental thinking that really helps to drive innovation. And so if you look at those metrics, like, you know, internal rate of return, quarterly growth, things like that, basically what happens is, the more efficient, you become the less kind of open to those weird trial and error things that that lead to the aha moments you are.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right. And I couldn’t have said it better. I love, love that contrast. Does that mean efficiency is bad, right? Is that what you’re saying is, what’s the what’s the role of those key metrics in in success, and is it possible to maintain them while still innovating?
Danny Nathan
I’m not saying that efficiency is bad, and that is, you know, they’re they’re at direct odds with one another, but at the same time, it’s one of those finer points of balance that you have to look for in creating a company, and it’s part of what makes this whole thing not easy. I mean, nobody said that building startups and building companies was an easy thing to do, and I think that one of the reasons is that you’re always walking that tightrope between how to create How do we create the efficiency that we need so that we can build a viable and growing business, but at the same time, how do we build a culture that allows for the continuation of the disruptive mindset that kind of got you there in the first place. And so, you know, there are, there’s a reason that those metrics are utilized today, and are, you know, a key focal area, especially for, you know, your CFOs and your coos and the folks that are really focused on the operational efficiency internally. But I think that building a culture that allows for experimentation and failure and doesn’t get so caught up in the efficiency that it begins to limit the opportunities for failure and experimentation is really where that kind of fine balancing act comes into play.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so let’s take let’s go a little deeper on that. Let’s take the let’s take a company, you know, really innovative, at some point in time, grew a ton because of it, market leader in their area. But if they’re honest, they’re sitting there listening, and they’re like, Yeah, I don’t know, the last time we’ve really genuinely innovated. How can companies like that regain their innovative edge?
Danny Nathan
You know, it comes down to one. First of all, first and foremost is just being open to it, having that realization and that moment of something has changed, and we have slowed down in our ability to create new and interesting things, to explore new business models and to really look for opportunities to continue to be disruptive in the way that you know, ostensibly we were, when we were a startup, that recognition is really the first big step. The other thing that we encourage companies to do often is to maintain close contact with their customers. And, you know, of course, a lot of companies say, Oh, well, we talk to our customers all the time. We send them an NPS survey, you know, we send them a Customer Service Satisfaction Survey, things like that. And you know, when we think about talking to customers, that’s really not what we mean. You know, what we focus on is the integration of the lean customer development process and the opportunities that are brought about by continually talking to customers, understanding where their pain points are understanding how your current solutions serve their needs, but more importantly, where there’s gaps in those solutions. And really what we find is that by talking to customers, you can kind of create that reminder that even though you’ve created something that has discovered product market fit and that has served a need and helped you build a business, you’re never done, there’s always something more that could be layered into it. There’s always new opportunities for growth or new problems that customers are coming across, that you can work with them to solve for and by creating a culture where that customer development process is every bit as ingrained as the product development process, you can really create a holistic view of where your opportunities are, and force yourself to maintain that view of innovation, because you’re never settling for the thing that you’ve already built.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, one of the challenges that I’ve seen larger, more successful organizations face is relegating things to becoming departmental initiatives, right? Great company cultures die in the HR department, and the same way, I find that great innovative companies die in innovation departments. And it’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine where it’s like, oh, we’re innovative. Look, that’s what they do over there. But I’ve found the more you do that, the less everybody else does. Has that been your experience? And if so, how do we fix it?
Danny Nathan
Um, it’s interesting. You know, there’s a toss up. I’m I’m not quite as hard on the idea of an innovation department within larger companies, because to me, it is demonstrative of at least some level of commitment to maintaining an innovative mindset. Now, I think the point that you’re driving at is that if you bucket all of the innovation amongst one small team that’s off in a corner, or off in a skunkworks lab or off in some other office, then yes, you’re really limiting the opportunity for that mindset to kind of bleed into the rest of the company. Whereas, you know, if your your innovation team is sitting in a fishbowl, as you know, as an example, in the middle of your corporate office, and everybody is constantly watching them do whatever it is they do. You know, we’ve run a ton of design sprints as an example, and people get really excited just because you’re putting sticky notes all over a wall. And the more that you can sort of integrate those teams into the way that companies work and allow their enthusiasm and their exploration kind of bleed out into the other departments. I think the better off you are in terms of helping people maintain and discover the mindset that sort of lives and breathes within that team, you know. And then the other thing that we encourage clients to do often is if you have an innovation team like that, is to make sure that they’re not so siloed that they don’t have an opportunity to learn from other people in the business. So bringing in other departments, holding, you know, innovation work sessions on a regular basis, and involving people from other other silos, if you will, from throughout the company, can help not only their team understand and kind of bring your mindset back to their part of the organization, but it can also infuse the the ideation and kind of the the thinking from that department into the innovation team. And so I think that if you’re going to silo a team off like that and make them the quote, unquote, innovation gurus, you have to do so in a manner that allows for that kind of collaboration across the broader organization.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, right. Got it. I love that one wondering if you can speak to this, because innovation is changing a lot right now, and what are some of the ways that you’re seeing companies use AI in particular, to innovate.
Danny Nathan
I knew that question was coming. A lot of companies, I think, are still trying to figure out how to utilize AI, and it’s become one of those buzzwords, basically, where every company, at this point is looking around going, oh my god, AI is happening. We need to. We need it. And on the one hand, the right, because AI is coming and is not going away, and it is going to change a lot of the way that we do business, but at the same time, it is still nations enough that we’re figuring out what the impact can be, especially for a team like an innovation team. And so I think that, you know, the biggest thing that we encourage clients, and you know, folks in that space to think about is understanding what’s happening in the space, learning about it, getting hands on with AI, enough that they can understand where it’s going and what the capabilities are today, so that they can begin to ideate and kind of churn on where it might impact them in the future. But I think that we’re still a little bit early to see really impactful use cases of AI on the innovation space, in particular, because innovation is something that is inherently human. It’s inherently driven by some sort of pain point in the, you know, the discovery of a better way to do something. And right now, the way that AI works is by taking, sort of at a very high level, taking the average answer from everything that has gone into the data set and spitting that out as sort of the best possible outcome that it can think of. And so average and innovation are kind of not aligned to one another. So, you know, just bear in mind, if you’re trying to apply AI that it’s a great place to understand what’s happening technically, but it’s not necessarily a great place to really drive ideation from.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I’m glad that you said that, because my next question piggybacks right off of that, and in particular, what’s the role of data management in sustaining innovation?
Danny Nathan
Ooh, that’s a really good question, especially kind of on the heels of an AI discussion. That’s one of the biggest problems that we see is that a lot of companies that want AI today aren’t really set up for it from a data perspective, and so the ability to collect data and to understand what you have at your disposal is both an amazing kind of foundational opportunity for thinking about how you might innovate and what might happen in the future. But when it comes to applying AI to that data, you have to make sure that it has been organized and normalized and ingested into a system that you can then use to build a model. And most companies just aren’t there yet. And so that’s part of the reason, you know, when I describe our habit of encouraging clients to play with AI, to understand what the capabilities are, but to sort of take a step back from that, that rush into we need to build this for ourselves. It’s because often they aren’t ready. And so if you take the time during the discovery process and the understanding process of learning about what AI is and what it can do today, that also buys you time to then understand what the current state of your data collection is, and then allow you to start preparing for how to better utilize that data, so that you can generate bespoke insights build a model that is unique to your company, for example, so that you’re not starting from sort of the middle ground of the same place that everybody else is. You know, everybody has access to chatgpt and to Gemini and to all of the popular tools today, and there is some measure of training that you can do within those tools, but it is not a bespoke model that is built around your company, for example.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right? Yeah, there were so many times as CEO, when we’d be sitting there trying to make a decision, like, man, if we had this data a year ago, you know? And we finally started sitting down saying, hey, what data are we going to ask for a year from now? And, you know, yeah, that’s great. It’s a skill. I don’t know that. We figured it out all at once, but we got better and better at actually using data, not just to show what happened, but actually to look ahead and plan for what’s coming.
Danny Nathan
Yeah, I think one of the other big problems with data is, you know, we’ve gone through the last 15 plus years realizing that there is a ton of value that is hidden in our data, and the result is that companies have become very good at collecting data, but not very good at then understanding how to utilize it. And so you’re looking at a bunch of companies now that have huge data lakes from the last decade, and they have information that could provide value, could prove valuable and insightful to them, but there’s no way to really unlock that value, because they haven’t gotten to the point where the data is being fed in and then, you know, utilized in a manner that allows you to kind of query it in really impactful ways. And so I think that as as the world of AI continues to grow up, that’s one of the biggest benefits that we will see, is that companies can start kind of digging into this huge data set that they’ve collected and really making use of it.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s fantastic. So, Danny, there’s a question I like to ask all my guests. Ask the same question of you here. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t the secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Danny Nathan
So I’ve developed kind of a personal mantra out of my experiences with this, and that mantra is failed beautifully, and to me, it is a consistent reminder that in everything entrepreneurial and everything that you do when you’re gonna try and build a company, a new product, et cetera, you are going to find moments of failure just full stop. And part of the problem with that is that we’re taught from a young age that failure is a bad thing, and so when we fail, when something doesn’t work, we view it as a problem, or as a, you know, as a missed opportunity on our part, when, in reality, in my mind, failure is just a learning experience. It’s how we figure out what works and what doesn’t along the path towards the thing that we’re trying to solve for. And so the more that people can, you know, to use another kind of adage, fall in love with the problem and not the solution, the more they will learn to accept failure along the path is just part of the process. And so my biggest piece of advice is learn and grow comfortable with the fact that you are going to fail.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true, so true, and so powerful. Danny, there’s some folks listening, and they’re hanging on everywhere that you said they they know their data is a mess. They they’re worried about losing their ability to innovate out on the edge, and they want someone to help walk them through it. How can they find more out about you and the work you guys do at Apollo 21?
Danny Nathan
So one of the best places is our newsletter. It was actually just launched recently. It is called innovate, disrupt or die, and it is available at Innovatedisruptordie.com, and then, of course, best place to learn about us and the work that we do, and review a bunch of case studies that dig deeply into what we’ve done for clients, as well as the outcomes for them, is our website at apollo21.io, bunch of good information there. And then, of course, we’re on all of the requisite social media platforms as Apollo21io. occasionally.io etc. So come find us there, but newsletter and the website are always the best place to start.
Scott Ritzheimer
Brilliant. Danny, thanks so much for being on the show. Just a privilege having you here, and for those of you watching listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care you.
Contact Danny Nathan
Danny Nathan is the founder of Apollo 21 — a unique company that sits at the intersection of a management consultancy, product design studio, and venture studio. Apollo 21 helps clients foster transformational growth through new venture creation, new product development, and the formation of internal venture-building operations. It removes barriers to scale by building technology that solves complex business and operational challenges. In doing so, they help organizations rediscover an entrepreneurial spirit and establish a culture of innovation.
Want to learn more about Danny Nathan’s work at Apollo 21 LLC? Check out his website at https://www.apollo21.io/
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