Earlier this year,  I read something coming out of the defense industry that has a much wider application. (https://www.defensetech.org/2017/02/17/special-operations/ ) The article is entitled, “Executive to Military: Be Like SOCOM and Bet on the Little Guy,” and it raises the perennial issue of staying with the so-called tried and true vs. taking a strategic risk on a new idea or product.

James “Hondo” Geurts, the top weapons buyer for U.S. Special Operations Command, says that taking risks on fledgling defense companies is sometimes the only way to get the right gear to operators in months instead of years.

Using a blackjack analogy Geurts argues that “If I can place 100 more bets than you, I don’t have to succeed every time. I may only have to succeed 10 percent of the time, and if you can only place five bets, I’m always going to beat you,” Geurts told an audience at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict Symposium.

“We are not always about taking the lowest-risk approach. There are times when we need to press the envelope.”

 Being risk-averse indicates a fear of failure as well as simultaneously stifling innovation. Today, what is needed is the ability to take “strategic risks”, risks grounded in hard research and in knowing “the basics” of your current and future needs.

In my new book, Make Your Own Waves: The Surfers Rules for Innovators and Entrepreneurs (http://www.louispatler.com/books/), I take a close look at some of the most extreme of the strategic risk takers I have encountered, Big Wave surfers. In attempting to ride 30-60 foot waves that are literally life-threatening, Big Wave surfers start with the basics. The first chapter, “Learn to Swim”, addresses these issues by looking at what comes before the start up, the invention or new product.

Many would-be entrepreneurs face incredible self-imposed barriers to entry that they can avoid by taking the simplest of first steps. Basic research, networking and prototyping are essential. Without those first baby steps their dreams were at risk.

            Nine out of ten start ups fail, and in my research and experience 9 out of 10 times they fail because they try to bypass the basics. In the beginning, there was work to be done on three levels…the mindset, the skillset and the toolset. The right mindset gives them the strategies and ideas. The useful skillset gets them moving towards implementation. And the last but very important toolset helps the innovator/entrepreneur refine and execute. Taken together they are like three legs of a stool; they create certain stability.

            Jeff Amerine is a successful entrepreneur many times over. Based in Northwest Arkansas, for 25 years he has been involved in the investor community as well. So Jeff knows both sides of the equation. He and I have done TV interviews and podcasts together focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship because we share the same desire and perspective: hard work and good preparation make success much more likely. Most recently Jeff has created Startup Junkie, a consulting practice that coaches, mentors, and advises startups regarding venture finance, business model validation and growth strategies—the entrepreneurial equivalent of learning to swim.

            Too often, impatience foreshadows the demise of an endeavor. And too often risk-aversion might keep a large corporation from placing their bet on the little guy.

Hard work plays a part as good things come to those who prepare and who wait for the right time and conditions. In business as it surfing, when the smaller innovative and progressive company beckons to be ridden, it could be the right time to give the wave a go.

I am often asked why so many of the photos of me have my hands spread wide and held high. Here is why.

My first visit to South Africa came in the 1970s at the height of apartheid. As a young and somewhat idealistic professor on the Semester at Sea program, when the ship docked I was shocked to see “coloured only” signage echoing the racist attitudes and policies there. As was true at every port, after the bow lines were tied off, a group of customs and government officials came on board to review all the paperwork and passports before clearing the passengers to disembark.

On board that semester were about 50 faculty and staff, 500 students, from more than 200 colleges and a dozen countries. Eleven of the American students were black.

As we lined up to head down the gangway word spread that the black students were not being allowed to leave the ship. For almost all of us this came as a shock, and the more we talked about it the more of us said, “If the black students cannot leave neither will we.” Less than a dozen students left the ship, creating a mini international incident because there were cameras and reporters waiting on the dock to capture the ship’s arrival and create human-interest stories. Now the story became “why aren’t the students coming off the ship?”

Within half an hour we watched as a half dozen white men in dark suits carrying brief cases came aboard. We knew of course that this had something to do with the student and faculty boycott. About an hour later we were told that the black students would be able to leave the ship after doing some additional paperwork, and by carrying an ID card identifying them as “temporary Europeans.”

Absurd as this was, we all felt it was a viable compromise that would get all of us onto land and onto our various planned adventures.  At this point I disembarked and headed off for the full seven days of our stay and ventured far and wide from Cape Town to a safari in Kruger Park, barely getting back for “on-ship time” two hours before departure.

As I approached the gangway I saw something very troubling: a number of students and faculty were crying. A colleague told me why.

Two of the black students got off the ship a bit late and as they were leaving the dock two white student friends who had rented a car hailed them. The black students were invited to come along on a leisurely ride up the twisting road to the top of Table Mountain.

Somewhere on that drive, upon seeing a white girl in the back seat with a black guy, an enraged Afrikaans driver ran the students’ car off the road, down the mountainside, and then sped off. One of the black students was killed and the others were all seriously injured. No attempt was made to track down the Afrikanns driver. Instantly we were all faced with the reality of racism at its worst.

That evening many of us had an impromptu meeting. As you can imagine, emotions were running very high. There was a lot of anger in the air, as thick as the dense fog over Table Mountain. The rhetoric escalated and built and built.

Then something happened that changed me to this day.

I was sitting next to one of the black students who had known of the accident for a few days. She was listening to everything very intently. Finally she had heard enough. She stood up and said to no one in particular “there is too much rage in here. It does not honor our fellow student’s life. There is not enough love in this room, we need to spread the dream!” She then raised her arms and spread them wide. Almost immediately, everyone in the room stood and raised their arms in unison.

Ever since then, when I am in a special place or situation, one that touches my soul, I raise my hands high, to celebrate that moment…and life.

I will be the first to admit that I have watched Le Tour De France bicycle races sporadically for many years and always mildly intrigued. I mean, it’s a sporting event that lasts TWENTY-ONE DAYS! Not only that but each day is a called a “stage” and meanders through amazing scenery over a period of up to 5 hours during which I found myself looking at the castles and vineyards and of course the bystanders running alongside the cyclists in their bizarre outfits in search of their 15 minutes of televised fame.

 My newest book, Make Your Own Waves: The Surfer’s Rules for Entrepreneurs and Innovators (http://www.louispatler.com/books/ ) took a close look at Big Wave surfers to find business insights, but until this year I had no clue about the inner workings of this bicycle race that captivates all of Europe and much of the sports world every July.

I am not sure what possessed me to record Stage 1, but I did and watched and played back a few key moments listening to the commentators more closely. Soon I started paying attention not to just the leaders, but also to the infamous “peloton” that comprises the rest of the pack of up to 198 riders, and the chess-game-like-strategy of the teams.

So, I recorded Stage 2.

And Stage 3 & 4 & 11…and well, actually, all 21 Stages.

In the course of those three weeks, ending with Chris Froome’s triumphant pedaling across the finish line in Paris, I realized that I had learned a lot about the Tour and also upon reflection, about leadership and innovation.

Here are my Top Five Lessons Learned from Le Tour de France.

1.     It’s all about the peloton: There are not individual riders who win the Tour that should have all the admiration, there are teams comprised of individual riders who create winners. The teams vie for position, control of the pace and most importantly, they surround and protect their key rider. The basic construct is that teams win, not individuals. As in business, leaders understand this.

2.     Acknowledge the “position players”: Much like baseball, soccer or basketball, each team has its “position players”. I never realized this until this year. There are at least five major roles (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/0/tour-de-france-rules-do-jerseys-mean-just-do-riders-go-toilet/ ): rouleur; lieutenant; lead-out man; domestique; and road captain.  Among them are the sprinters who store up their energy for a final burst to the finish line after perhaps 125 miles of plodding along in the peloton. There are climbers for the hills who have serious leg strength to power up steep slopes. After watching about 50 hours of Tour footage, I can imagine using these designated roles for creating innovation teams.

3.     Celebrate in stages: The life of an entrepreneur and of a Tour rider happens in stages. It is not a sprint. In fact it is not even a marathon, it is a way of working that moves one pedal rotation at a time. The 21 stages of the Tour each have a winner. Each stage also involves mini-celebrations by the winning team. There will be only one winner at the end, but as the great leaders know, celebrating along the way is crucial to sustaining spirit and energy.

4.     Yellow, green and polka dot jerseys celebrate strengths:  The Tour acknowledges the varying strengths of the riders. The overall leader with the fastest net time wears the yellow jersey. The green jersey goes to the rider with the most points that accrue during the many stages. The polka-dot jersey is for the “King of the Mountain”, the rider with the most points on the mountainous sections of the tour. And the white jersey goes to the fastest rider who is under 26 years old. The teams understand two basic leadership and innovation premises: you build on individual strengths, and you form teams based on complimentary differences.

5.     The breakaways usually get caught and surpassed: In most every Stage of the Tour, at some early point a group of 2-12 riders sprints ahead of the peloton hoping to create an insurmountable gap and/or wear down the peloton. The breakaway group often “cooperates” and riders take turns leading the small pack, fighting wind resistance and allowing those behind them a bit of a breather. Where strategy comes to the fore is when the teams in the peloton have to decide when to close in on the breakaway group. Notice I said “when” not “if”. With very few exceptions the peloton eventually catches and surpasses the breakaway group. A good lesson in leading innovation is found here too: even if you eventually get passed, breakaways set the stage for what will follow and are therefore crucial to the innovation process.

Vive Le Tour de France!

Today I was reading about who is and who is not buying Harley-Davidson motorcycles (http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/millennials-are-wrecking-americas-most-iconic-motorcycle-brand/ar-BBEicIs?li=BBnbfcN ). The article contained the following quote about millennials from an industry market analyst:

Huh? Say what? Secular erosion? Weakened conviction? Materialization of near-term catalysts?

I have a Ph.D. and three decades in business consulting and I struggled to find the real meaning of these phrases, which I think is: millennials ain’t buyin’ Harleys.

To me, words matter. Call me old-fashioned, but the careful use of words matters too, especially if you want to…communicate.

This analyst’s words got me to thinking about a pet peeve of mine: For a long time, I have been puzzled by how often words are used interchangeably, with little basis in their actual definitions.

For example, the words “brainstorming,” “creativity,” and “innovation” are often used as if they all mean the same thing. So, for the sake of clearing the air and giving each word their rightful place, I took the time to look up their respective definitions.

BRAINSTORMING:

brain·storm

ˈbrānˌstôrm/

verb

gerund or present participle: brainstorming

1.     produce an idea or way of solving a problem by holding a spontaneous group discussion.

"a brainstorming session"

synonyms:

Conger up, dream, think, ponder

CREATIVITY:

cre·a·tiv·i·ty

krēāˈtivədē/

noun

1.     the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.

synonyms:

inventiveness, imagination, innovation, originality, individuality

INNOVATION:

in·no·va·tion

inəˈvāSH(ə)n/

noun

1.     the action or process of innovating.

synonyms:change, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, breakthrough

o   a new method, idea, product

Clearly these words are related, so their synonyms and connotations offer up the differences. Brainstorming is a verb and a tool that is clearly associated with problem solving in the context of a non-judgmental group setting.  Creativity is a noun linked to originality and artistry and as such refers to an outcome or work of art. Innovation is a noun that refers to change, upheaval and breakthroughs. Interestingly, though innovation is a noun, its definition – “the act or process of innovating”—is very verb-like.

I try to keep these words separated. When I speak of brainstorming, I am referring to a tool useful in solving problems. Creativity is a label I use to describe an outcome or work or prototype after the fact. And innovation is a broader process under which brainstorming and creativity may fall.

This may all seem to be much ado about nothing…but words do matter. And since I have created one of the few innovation training programs that links innovation and execution (Innovating for Results™) it is important to know what innovation is…and what it isn’t.

And by the way, what IS a “millennial” and just how old are they?

In Soren Kaplan’s book, Leapfrogging, he correctly says “Here’s the issue:  Disruptive innovation isn’t how innovation works in the real world when you’re in the process of doing it – only in retrospect by storytellers.” He rightly argues that you don’t set out to be “disruptive,” you set out to make something innovative. The scale and impact of that innovation is determined in the marketplace and only history will determine if the innovation was a game-changer.

So, using an automotive analogy, what innovators do is look out the windshield more than into the rear view mirror. Many readers know of the demise of what I call The Three B’s: Blackberry, Borders and Blockbuster or the rise of the Two A’s: Amazon and Apple. Few readers know about looking at what surfer’s call “outside”, of what it takes to see sets of waves that are coming and choosing the best wave in the best set.

In 2013, Beyond the Idea: How to Execute Innovation in Any Organization, Vijay Govindarajan became the most recent in a number of books that look at the end product of the innovation process: delivery and execution. (There are of course a commensurate number of books that look at the front end of innovation, the generating of creative ideas.)

But to my knowledge, no single book encompasses the innovator’s strategy, skills and tools needed to go from idea to implementation…from learning to swim…to staying stoked!

Perhaps the one book that informs Make Your Own Waves is Thomas Kuhn’s 1970 classic The Structure of Scientific Revolution. In it Kuhn argues that a “revolution” in science occurs when a new “paradigm” or world view comes along that can account for the “anomalies” of the prevailing paradigm while at the same time offering up a new structure for science, literally changing how we view the world. Hence Copernicus is replaced by Galileo, Galileo by Newton, and Newton by Einstein. And on it will go. What Kuhn offered that had previously been missing was a coherent description of the “process” and “structure” of science needed to signal a true “revolution."

Make Your Own Waves is unique in offering a process and a structure borrowed from an unconventional source--big wave surfing-- and inserted into the ever-changing world of the entrepreneur and innovator.

For more information on how to bring innovative thinking to fruition look here: Innovating for Results Training System

“Whether they're battle-tested veterans or fresh-faced newbies, entrepreneurs undergo an intense learning process when establishing and launching a business,” says a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine (Entrepreneur magazine, April 21, 2014).  “Even those who've been through it before typically face a certain amount of uncertainty. That's why it's critical that they learn as much as possible about their specific area of business as well as entrepreneurship as a whole. “

The article goes on to list their Top 14 books of all time on entrepreneurship. Of those, none address the strategic thinking that informs the entrepreneurial endeavor, and their number one book is actually on innovation: Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma. In the book, Christensen coined the term “disruptive innovation”, referring to innovations that are “game-changers”.

Interestingly, he was recently asked a simple question:

Q: “How do you do disruptive innovation?”

His answer was quite telling:

A:  “I don’t know how, I just know how to describe it.”

Christensen is typical of today’s writers on innovation and entrepreneurship: long on stories, short on skills and tools. So they are better at describing the destination than offering a roadmap to others on the journey.

My new book, Make Your Own Waves, is a road map for entrepreneurs and innovators using the lessons of big wave surfers as an analogy to better structure your journey.

The Wall Street Journal reported recently that 255 books with “innovation” in their title were published in the last three months. The Journal also documented“A search of annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows companies mentioned some form of the word ‘innovation’ 33,528 times last year, which was a 64% increase from five years before that.” So, we certainly are using the word more but have no greater understanding of how to apply it.

This is not new.

Nearly 75 years ago, in 1942, Joseph Schumpeter, wrote of “creative destruction” of ideas and ideologies, the predecessor to disruptive innovation.

Fast-forward 50 years to 1994. MIT’s James Utterback published Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation in which he described how myopia can hasten the end to an entire industry, e.g. how the “ice harvesting industry” was replaced by “ice boxes”. Again we find “descriptive” books that focus on the rise and/or fall of the products of innovation rather than the process. Make Your Own Waves provides fresh insight into the process of innovation.

For more information on how to bring innovative thinking to fruition look here: Innovating for Results Training System

This is the time of year when families all over the world await word on where their children will be going to college. It is also the time when the students are asked to think about their major fields of study. Having been though this process five times with my five children, I have some advice for parents and kids alike: It’s not what you major in that predicts your future. It’s what you do with what you know that matters!

A recent article in Inc. Magazine on what influential tech CEOs studied in college confirmed my advice (https://www.inc.com/business-insider/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-tim-cook-tech-ceos-studied-college-degree.html ) and show that there many paths to the top of a mountain. Consider these majors of tech icons:

            -Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has a B.A. in… English

            -YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has B.A.’s in…History, Literature and Economics

            -LinkedIn CEO Reed Hoffman has an M.S. in…Philosophy

            -Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman has a B.A. in…Economics

            -Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a B.A. in…Economics

            -Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel studied…Product Design

            -FaceBook CEO Mark Zuckerberg studied…Psychology

            -Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has a B.A. in…Industrial Design

            -Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe has a B.A. in…International Studies

            -Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff got his B.A. in…Business Administration

            -Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield has a M.A. in…Philosophy

-Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs had… well, “unknown” majors.

Furthermore four of these—Spiegel, Zuckerberg, Gates and Jobs—dropped out of college.

For three decades I have worked with innovative companies whose founders have a broad, interdisciplinary education. They also have had some global living and/or travel under their belts, which has given them the invaluable gift of “perspective.”

So to those entering college I encourage you to choose a major that engenders passion in you, and be sure to build into you college years some time to see the world!

A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of doing a talk and book signing to promote my new book Make Your Own Waves: The Surfer’s Rules for Innovators and Entrepreneurs (http://www.louispatler.com/books/ ).  The host of the event introduced using a few remarks drawn from his own Google search of my background and experience. I have three decades of consulting, five books and over 100 articles and an extensive bio, I.e. there is a lot to choose from.

Out of all the possible things he could have said about me he closed his comments with a quote from one of my early blogs:

I came to this conclusion after years and years of work in the innovation world, a world filled with companies and clients who brought me in to help them develop “a culture of innovation.” Over and over I met with top leadership and helped them craft a plan to make a culture of innovation a reality, and over and over again the results, by my standards, were a step in the right direction but generally “underwhelming.”

One day, while working with a team of engineers who certainly didn’t think of themselves as innovators, I offered to run a couple of my workshops to give them some further skills and tools useful to the innovation process.  To my surprise they jumped at the offer and months later, with more tools and skills at their disposal, their productivity and creativity grew exponentially.

It was at that moment that I made a distinction in my own mind between an abstract goal of creating a “culture of innovation,” and the reality I had just witnessed of a “company of innovators.” To simply state the obvious: innovators make innovations.

A recent interview about design thinking with my friend George Kembell, co-founder of Stanford University’s “d.school” speaks to the same revelation that I had about the power of democratizing innovation. ( Article Here )

“Somehow, I think, culturally, we’ve over-associated creativity with the arts,” he says. “As a leader you want everyone to be innovating, in terms of their creative capacity, not just one department, not just the product group. You want innovation in finance, innovating in marketing, innovating in product development, innovating in supply chain, innovating in hiring and all that stuff.”

Innovation is not restricted to the chosen few, the “gifted” or the “artsy.” To truly create a culture of innovation the key is to start by training a company of innovators. If you do the latter properly, the former follows automatically.

Last week I had the honor of giving the commencement speech to Sociology graduates at my alma mater, Wayne State University. My preference for such speeches that I have heard in the past is that they be short and from the heart, anchored by real and memorable stories. I decided in part to speak about “knowing your strengths” and one story from my PhD days that immediately came to mind.

I was “ABD”…All But Dissertation…in my graduate school studies. My class work was done. My dissertation research was done.  My written exams were done. My foreign language test was done. And emotionally, I was burned out…I was DONE too! I needed a break.

So while walking down a hallway I see a poster on the wall for the Semester at Sea program. Though I had never flown, had never been on a ship, and never had a passport the idea of sailing around the world and teaching university students captured my imagination.

I called the number on the poster and spoke to a nice lady who was the secretary to the Dean. She asked me about my teaching and publishing record and it was a short conversation, as I had neither taught nor published at that point. She chuckled politely and said she was obligated to send me the application packet but told me “don’t hold your breath.” She was encouraging though, saying that I seemed like a good future prospect down the road a bit.

Disappointed, I decided to explore other options and applied for the Peace Corp and was accepted for two years in East Africa. Months go by and I am in the final stages of getting organized for my Peace Corp assignment, when while clearing my desk I come upon the Semester at Sea packet. I fill it out dutifully and professionally, write a formal cover letter, and staple it all together before putting it in the envelope.

My imagination soared again as I pictured myself teaching on a ship while circumnavigating the globe. At that moment I started thinking about my strengths, about what advantage I might have that could at some point get me a job on the ship?

Then it hit me. I had one major asset. I took out a red felt pen and in large all caps I wrote across my cover letter eight words that changed my life:

“I CAN LEAVE WITH 24 HOURS NOTICE!”

I slipped the pages into the envelope and mailed it off.

Fast-forward three months to a late August, Friday afternoon when my phone rings. It’s the Dean’s secretary. “Do you remember me?” she asks. “Of course I do,” I tell her. “What’s up?”

“Well,” she says, “our sociology professor had a stroke this morning! We sail Monday. I have to fill that position somehow today and I remembered your comment. Are you able to leave by Monday?” I paused to breathe and I said, “YES! Let’s make this work.”

I hung up the phone, leaned back in my chair and was overcome with good emotion. I was suddenly filled with amazing energy.

By Friday night I had tied up many loose ends.

By Saturday morning I had my first flight all set.

By Sunday afternoon I was all packed.

And by Monday morning I boarded the ship for the first of what would be many Semesters at Sea voyages. Decades later, I am still on their Alumni Board. I knew my life had changed forever that weekend.

And all of this happened because I knew my strengths and built on them.

What are your strengths? And which of them can help you change your life?

As one who has been immersed in and researching innovation for three decades I have become enough of a curmudgeon to know when things rub me the wrong way.  For me, that rub comes from perspectives that are more of a barrier to innovation than an enabler.

One culprit? False dichotomies. Here is a recent example.

I came upon a thoughtful article entitled “Strategy vs. Design Thinking” ( https://medium.com/@kingshukdas/strategy-versus-design-thinking-41d86ad81f1f ) in which Kingshuk Das says:

 “Organizations looking to grow often find themselves caught between conventional and newer approaches to innovation. While traditional strategy calls for rigorous analysis and critical thinking, design thinking espouses ‘thinking by doing’. The key,” says Das, “is to find the sweet spot between the two approaches.”

Das goes on to link strategic thinking with “overthinking” because it can be too analytical, and “design thinking” then is described as “underthinking.” It is the standard “think vs. build” line of reasoning and leads Das to conclude that when it comes to innovation the goal is to find the “sweet spot” between the two.

In my experience this is a false dichotomy because it pigeon-holes options into two categories. The trouble with this is that innovation doesn’t work like that.

Innovation doesn’t move in a straight line. It doesn’t create conflict between thinking and building. And it certainly isn’t limited to any one “sweet spot.”

In my experience and in my research, innovation moves in spiraling circles or ellipses or infinity loops.

 “Innovation” should not be limited to the generating of ideas. The ultimate objective should be making an innovation manifest—Innovating for Results, as I call it in my training programs.

To bring an idea to fruition there is an additional element often missed: simplicity.

In my innovation world, the three core elements of innovation are prototyping (PR), iterating (I), and simplifying the method (SM), i.e. PR-I-SM. These three can happen in any order. They can pair up. They can take you from start to restart to finish to refresh. 

As an idea shines its light into the prism, a burst of colors fills the room, rendering the room forever changed.

There are enough barriers to innovation without having to work past dichotomous thinking models. I have found that the incessant and often disruptive quest for simplification is the real key to the innovation kingdom.

As my mom used to say: “the simpler the better.”

Today, the best player in College basketball will be named to receive the John Wooden Award. It is the highest honor in the sport.

What may not be common knowledge about the selection process is that any finalist for this award must meet criteria set by Coach Wooden (1910-2010) himself for academic standing and community service. In his many years of coaching he is usually known as having won the most NCAA titles (10), and for being the only person named to the College Basketball Hall of Fame as a player and a coach. To me though, his greatness transcends the world of basketball. He was the quintessential life coach.

I knew Coach Wooden from my UCLA days and from his many camps, i.e. for close to 40 years. I once asked him what his proudest achievement was, and without hesitation he said that it was that every one of his players got their college degree! That is certainly a record that will never be broken, especially in an era of “one-and-done” with players turning pro after their freshman year,

I was thinking about many of Coach’s analogies that apply to business and how it is that today many companies face a “one and done” when it comes to retaining top talent. How, I wondered, would Coach build a lasting company culture in today’s business environment?

I offer just five of the many things I learned from Coach Wooden, lessons he taught me about leadership and teamwork that apply to business, things he ingrained in me in the gym:

1.    Start by learning how to tie your shoelaces.

The first practice of the year began with Coach calling us together, sitting us down on the bench and telling us to take off our shoes! Then he would demonstrate to us the proper way to tie our shoes in a double knot from now on.

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do,” he would say. We learned to control what was within our control.

2.    Use the backboard.

Once practice began on the court, he would emphasize fundamentals and teach us skills that had the greatest odds of success. He had determined that a much higher percentage of shots that use the backboard are successful over those that do not.

“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

3.    Master the bounce pass.

In drills and in game simulations, we learned the many advantages of the bounce pass: it is more accurate; it is a harder pass to steal; it is easier for your teammate to control. Your teammates thanked you for it.

“You can’t live a perfect day until you do something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

4.    Being “benched” is a great teaching tool.

In case we did not execute lessons 1-3 above, we learned quickly that we would get benched. No exceptions. Total consistency. Untied laces…benched! Not using the backboard…benched! Using a chest pass when we could have done a bounce pass…benched! We learned a lot, about basketball and about life sitting on the pine.

“Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability.”

5.    Character trumps reputation.

Above all, to Coach the measure of any person is found in what they value, what they believe in and how they then behave accordingly. He did not suffer fools. He had no tolerance for showboating. The bigger your ego the less impressive you were to him.

He was teaching us how to lead on and off the court. For example,

“The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

If my leadership beliefs in Coach Wooden’s teachings make me sound like a zealot, then I plead guilty as charged. As Coach said:

“If I were ever prosecuted for my religion, I truly hope there would be enough evidence to convict me.”

By Louis Patler

The term “wipe out” comes from the world of surfing. In my new book, Make Your Own Waves: The Surfer’s Rules for Innovators and Entrepreneurs (http://www.louispatler.com/books/ ) I have a chapter that was originally going to be called “Expect to Wipe Out Daily.” I had done many interviews with entrepreneurs and that title seemed reasonable for both surfing and business as it spoke to rallying after setbacks, something every entrepreneur and startup must reckon with. But over time, and after many conversations with Big Wave surfers, more and more of them offered another point of view that I had not considered.

            Big Wave surfing icon Jeff Clark and I talked directly about wipe outs and his comments echoed that of other Big Wave surfers and changed my purview.

I asked him what he thought of some of my proposed chapter titles. The conversation was moving along until I got to Chapter 6 “expect to wipe out daily.” Suddenly his face contorted a bit; there was a pause and then a wry smile.

“I don’t expect to wipe out…ever! But do I push the edge to a point where that COULD happen? I hope so. Always,” he said. “A wipe out will give you a better understanding of what you need to do differently to be successful. Being in condition and prepared well enough is essential for your survival. But a lot of times the wipe outs are a mental thing, not so much a physical thing. They can become physical…I’ve come up purple before. And my friends are like ‘how long have you been down’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know… long enough to get purple.’

“It’s knowing that you have that mindset that will let you hold out for a wipe out,” he adds. “People ask me ‘how long can you hold your breath?’ and it’s always been ‘as long as I have to.’ That’s how long I can hold my breath. And knock on wood it hasn’t failed me ever."

            In business as in surfing, no one gets the perfect ride on the perfect wave on the perfect day. So, it is important to be resilient and to learn from each wave. Big Wave surfers physically prepare to wipe out but they don’t expect to wipe out on any given wave. More importantly they are mentally prepared to learn from their wipe outs, make adjustments, and then paddle back out to face the next wave. It’s all about attitude: one person’s wipe out is another’s opportunity for a fresh start.

Innovation is certainly all the rage these days and if it were a religion, the Silicon Valley would be its Mecca. I recently came upon and article from the South China Morning Post (http://www.businessinsider.com/china-used-to-copy-silicon-valley-but-now-its-silicon-valley-that-copies-china-2017-3 ) that made me think twice about where the epicenter of some innovation may be.

Long seen in the business press as a hotbed of ripping off ideas and products, this article chipped away at that stereotype and described how China’s Xiaozhu was developing it’s own advanced version of Airbnb.

The article is short and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. But to give you a feel for what China is doing with Xiaozhu here are four examples:

1.     They install smart key locks to make it easier on guests and hosts.

2.     They link part-time cleaning service providers with hosts.

3.     They offer first-time host training sessions.

4.     Xiaozhu encourages users to link their accounts with Sesame Credit, a social credit scoring system used by China’s Alibaba Group that rates an individual’s credibility using big data.

More details and examples are in the article. On the surface though, and to coin a term, it seems to me that in some ways Xiaozhu has “out-innovated” Airbnb.

Read on!

“Each time your children come across a stray animal, they likely don’t have to self-consciously rehearse a subroutine of zoological attributes to decide whether it’s a cat or a dog,” writes Aditya Singh.  (https://hbr.org/2017/01/deep-learning-will-radically-change-the-ways-we-interact-with-technology ) “Human beings come pre-loaded with the cognitive gear to simply perceive these distinctions. The differences appear so obvious, and knowing the differences comes so naturally to us, that we refer to it as common sense.” 

Humans are lucky and can rely on common sense, but for computers to make distinctions requires specific algorithms “to render even the most basic of judgments. Despite decades of unbroken gains in speed and processing capacity, machines can’t do what the average toddler does without even trying,” says Singh. “That is—until now.”

Enter, “deep learning,” a branch of artificial intelligence that is modeled after neural networks in the human brain which gives machines the ability to intuitively understand the real world. For example, Singh points out that at Google a deep learning network “was shown 10 million unlabeled images from YouTube, and proved to be nearly twice as accurate at identifying the objects in the images (cats, human faces, flowers, various species of fish, and thousands of others) as any previous method.”

The implications of deep learning are enormous for innovators and entrepreneurs says Singh. “I believe that over the next few years, start-ups and the usual big tech suspects will use deep learning to upgrade a wide suite of existing applications, and to create new products and services. Entirely new business lines and markets will spring up, which will, in turn, give rise to still more innovation. Deep learning systems will become easier to use and more widely available. And I predict that deep learning will change the way people interact with technology as radically as operating systems transformed ordinary people’s access to computers.”

This research on deep learning parallels my own research on elite athletes—in this case Big Wave surfers—and found that they had much to teach innovators and serial entrepreneurs. In my new book, Make Your Own Waves: The Surfers Rules for Innovators and Entrepreneurs (http://www.louispatler.com/books/ in much the same way that deep learning allows machines to build on basic elements and exponentially up the ante, these surfers and serial entrepreneurs both build on their basic idea and have the ability to “dare bigger.” In other words, they are always looking for a deeper and more expansive opportunity –a bigger wave--rather than simply modifying a product or service to stay in safe and predictable waters. They all “dare big.”