Chris Denson: Crushing the Box

Transcript

[0:00:25] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Chris Densen, author of Crushing the Box. What would our world be like if everyone followed the rules? Well, the computer would have never been invented by Grace Hopper. George Lucas wouldn’t have taken us to a galaxy far, far away in Star Wars and Colonel Sanders would still be pumping gas instead of serving up Kentucky Fried Chicken. Chris believes that true innovators think way outside the box, and he knows this well. He’s an award winning innovator himself and the host of the Innovation Crush Podcast, which has more than 700,000 subscribers worldwide. In this episode, Chris shares how you too can conquer the status quo and make great breakthroughs happen. So if you want to become a true innovator, this episode is for you. Now, here is our conversation with Chris Densen.

[0:01:48] Chris Denson: I think there was a period of time, almost like a year, I had a lot of different jobs and they were all cool and great and we did some cool things and then I just started seeing how innovation was important to different companies, different ways of thinking, even down to the individual and I was trying less to get a job but to make the right career move and I knew what that was and it was very hard to stick to my guns. Every meeting or meet and greet or interview or thing that I would go to was kind of like, “You’re a creative director?” “Yeah, but not really.” “Oh, you’re the technology guy?” “Kind of, it incorporates technology.” “Oh, so is it marketing or is it product development?” “Yes.” You know, just going through these pain points that people misunderstand it, they’re like wanting to pigeon hole an individual or a business construct that they readily understand or identify. But I’m glad it worked out but I really stuck to my guns and it was almost a year before I even took a role of a project. I mean, I’d done some consulting and things in between time but it was like – I think I know what I’m talking about. Finally, you find a family if you will from a business standpoint who understands your language, I do a lot of references to the idea of misfit toys, you know? In the book. It’s like I’ve felt for a very long time like a misfit toy. The downside is, is it me, am I the in slate and not getting it? Once I did find sort of that home and found an ability to blossom, it kind of started to, I was like, I wanted to give this sort of a handbook to other individuals and/or organizations because you know, a lot of organizations are like, “Oh, we want to be an innovative.” It becomes such a blah industry word, right? It doesn’t mean anything on the surface but there is something about what it means to you. I wanted to be that guide to really translating what it is and how to build around it.

[0:03:46] Charlie Hoehn: Tell me what it was like when you found your family? What was that like?

[0:03:52] Chris Denson: I cried — no, I’m just kidding, I didn’t cry. I cried for hours. No, it was great, it was like, I entered my first meeting with my team and I’d inherited this team and we had a brain storm, you know, the first couple of days are like, “Oh yeah, cool, here’s where the mail room is,” right? All that stuff. Then he finally start doing, you start getting your hand’s dirty and I just remembered just being in awe at the things that were coming out of these people’s mouths, like, you know, and I don’t mean this in any sort of egotistical way but I think we’ve all been there at some point where you are the smartest person in the room to some degree on a particular project or, you know, in a roll. This is one of the first times I’d felt stupid. I felt like out of my league, right? That was proof that I’m going to be stretched here creatively and, you know, I also have a rock star team of individuals around me that think way outside the box, right? Not even in the cliché way of saying, “Think outside the box or push the envelope,” like truly, like, “Oh.” Not only is that far out and weird is actually super relevant and can be practical. Just getting in that exercise and not only that, you know, having that sort of thinking support it. We talk a lot about how the innovator’s journey is a lonely one because you know, if you are an entrepreneur or an inventor or whatever, you see a product or service that should be the world, so you literally see the world in a different way then most people do currently and to get that vision pushed out is like, “No, I’m telling you, this is the best thing since sliced bread.” You’re like, “Well tell me about it after you launch it, right?” But to have even a corporate structure that goes, “Oh yup, you guys go ahead and do that and we’ll help you continue to find homes for your outlandish thinking.” You know, that’s a good feeling. So coming home to roost in a way that feels familiar but it also challenging at the same time and to me, the combination is sort of indicative of endless possibilities I guess.

[0:05:58] Charlie Hoehn: Tell me about the first time that you sort of witnessed innovation, massive innovation, sort of unfolding in front of you in the workplace?

[0:06:09] Chris Denson: Easy; there was a period of time where — this is kind of a fun story because I was the first marketing director of the New York film academy, pretty straight forward film school and I thought what I was doing was interesting, right? Because there was no blueprint, they had never had a marketing director so everything was like a blank canvas. Short while after being there, I had an opportunity to work for the American Film Institute, which also films school. But, what I didn’t know was that they also had a digital content lab, which was literally an exploration of marriages of technology and entertainment while there were four of us who ran the lab, we would recruit volunteer mentors from around the world to sort of workshop projects for six to eight months at a time. Everyone did it for the cache, for the camaraderie, for the networking and just for the free-spirited creative thinking. So when you’re bringing in people from Switzerland or you’re bringing in the Nolan Bushnell who created Atari and Chuck E. Cheese or a Bill Duke or Nan Dela Pena who is an amazing – was doing VR before we were talking about it like we are today and it’s really just unbridled thinking and it is like really asking “what if?” and you know, sort of our mandate was to be three years out into the future, which doesn’t seem like a long time but I mean, as you probably know.

[0:07:27] Charlie Hoehn: In tech, yeah.

[0:07:28] Chris Denson: Exactly, as fast as things changed. Like three years, you know, it’s like your octogenarian creatively by the time. Just to even just being conversation and in dialogue with some of these folks, you know, yes we did a bunch of projects but I always say, for every project I can tell you about, there’s 50 on the cutting room floor that didn’t make it for whatever reason. You know, it’s like your artist’s favorite album, you know? Or your favorite artist’s album where it’s like, “Yeah, those were 11 great songs. You should hear the other ones we recorded that we couldn’t get the sample cleared or it wasn’t done in time,” whatever the thing is, there’s that. So just to be in that room and be in that company and not only that, give the ideas away, you know? The AFI was non profit, so every year, alongside the AFI fest, we would hold an event called AFI Digifest and we would showcase the projects and be like, “Look, if you have some funds and a team and you want to go build this thing that we just laid out a blueprint on, please do.” It was great. We were working with the PlayStation, working with Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation, HBO, ABC, Family and just sort of being inventive around how people will experience the world.

[0:08:40] Charlie Hoehn: That’s awesome, I can’t imagine the types of people that you’re running into and collaborating with, that’s super exciting.

[0:08:49] Chris Denson: It really is fantastic. I mean, to this day, if I go to a Digital Hollywood event or a CES or you know, any of these kind of like future forward thinking, gatherings, running into those people is like seeing your old college roommate. It’s like, “Hey!” You know, you kind of pickup where you left off but I think that’s really what it speaks to as far as the human curation side of the innovation process, right? Like making sure you are in good company and with people who you can vibe with but also like, stretch imagination and add your point of view. Kind of do away with the normal constructs and guidelines that were given, at least for a period of time and see what happens on the other side.

[0:09:37] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I want to learn as much as possible about how we can be better innovators from you. Let’s talk about your book, what would you say is the biggest take away in Crushing the Box, the one thing that you really want listeners to remember?

[0:09:53] Chris Denson: To not read the book. In a way, you know? Or maybe to like, take the book and then do it your own way, right? That’s why it’s 10 Essential Rules for Breaking Essential Rules, right? Everybody says, “This is how you do it,” and then you know, if you’re going to say, “You know what? I don’t want to do it that way.” How do you do that? I think even the process of innovation in and of itself is iterative, right? It’s always evolving, you're always evolving as an individual and I think within that, that word “individual” is important because again, just like the idea that we are all human beings, when I talk about micro failures in one of their chapters, you know, we all talk about failure like “fail hard, fail fast”. A, nobody really wants to do that. B, that we’ve heard that story enough I guess from an editorial standpoint and I’m not saying that this is not an important thing to embrace but, you know, there’s life, you know? Life happens. The fact that you may send 20 emails to an investor who said he loves your ideas and your product and then he never responds. Or you know, I have two kids and a wife and it’s like, there’s places I can’t do and things I can’t do or things that I can’t get to because, you know, I want to be attentive to my family and that, you know, is sometimes at the risk of better performance or showing up in a place or kind of disrupting my own creative flow. So there’s that sort of human component to what we all experience as innovators. As Troy Carter said in one of my interviews, he said, “I’m looking for founders who are willing to drive a mac truck through a Cole de sac,” you know? It’s this emotional fortitude it takes to make great ideas happen because a great idea doesn’t happen on its own, the innovation’s also just a process by which you get it done. That is an arduous set of tasks. I think that’s sort of it, it’s just A, embrace your humanity and like own it and like the ups and downs are okay. But B, it’s like these are very lose guidelines, right? At the end of it, you start to construct what works for you.

[0:12:05] Charlie Hoehn: Let’s go through some of these guidelines and just give a maybe a quick explanation or a story to couple with each of them. You say to “swim like an otter”. Why swim like an otter?

[0:12:18] Chris Denson: Because they swim great. No, there’s more depth to it than that I think, I hope.

[0:12:24] Charlie Hoehn: Right, that’s all it says in the chapter is otters swim great.

[0:12:29] Chris Denson: It’s like four sentences, you’re like, “Okay, I guess I’ll swim like an otter then.” No, there’s a guy I interviewed named Dan Goods and Dan is NASA’s artisan resident. Official title is visual strategist but he’s been there for like 15 years, he helps craft missions, he turns geek speak into creative output, he’s responsible for doing public art exhibitions and experiences for translating science into like, understandable information for people like you and I, right? The layman who doesn’t understand astrophysics and how we actually, form a scientific perspective, get to mars. It’s like, “No, Mars is right there. Look at this through this art experience.” He has just done phenomenal work and so during our conversation, he was telling me about a professor he had in art school who gave him an assignment to draw an otter and he did it and turned it in and the professor said, “All right, in a couple of days, meet me at the pool,” and he had Dan get in the water and swim like an otter. The whole sort of premise of that chapter is about empathy. When we’re creating things, when we’re inventing, when we’re innovating I guess is making sure you have empathy and a deep and understanding and immersive understanding of who you’re creating for, why you’re creating it, asking those unasked questions and not only that, going there and being a part of what the community that you’re trying to affect. So, you know, the sort of imaginative example we put in there was this idea that, you know, if have some startup idea around NASCAR, yes, you can watch YouTube videos, you can read links, you can make phone calls and talk to NASA or NASCAR and brainstorm but nothing like going to a NASCAR race and getting the dirt splashed on your face and standing in line for an hour and a half to get a beer and seeing how people are like are physically meandering around this space or next to you.

[0:14:30] Charlie Hoehn: What is the typical company’s way of doing things? They just do research online I guess? Or they kind of make something for themselves rather than actually experiencing the world through their customer’s eyes or through normal people’s eyes?

[0:14:46] Chris Denson: Well, the data shows that companies — I’m being sarcastic because that’s usually what that’s the first thing we hear, right? It’s like, “the data shows, you know, males, 18 and 34, do this.” You’re like, “Okay, what else do we know?” They also, from a com score perspective, right? They over index in this category, right? “They gravitate towards music.” Okay. Which don’t get me wrong, data is great information, you know? Again, I just keep returning to this sort of, we’re all human beings, right? The data is going to be only indicative of what I did over the course of a week or whatever period of time, we’ve monitored this individual. It doesn’t necessarily show you my emotional state or maybe that’s – I gave a negative Yelp review because my mom died a week before and I’ve just been in a crappy mood for the past week. The sandwich was fine; I was mad, right? It’s really understanding what – matter of fact, it’s funny, that’s a funny example that I just kind of spewed out. But it was a restaurant a couple of years ago that was getting a ton of negative reviews and it was like, it were the same sort of reviews. It was, “The food is always cold, it takes a long time.” The same sort of set of negative comments and so, this restaurant ended up mounting cameras inside and they were like, “We’ve got to understand what’s happening.” What they found was that most of the people who were coming to this restaurant were when their food was served, they’d spend anywhere from three to five minutes taking pictures of their food and posting it and so of course, by the time you start eating it —

[0:16:25] Charlie Hoehn: Oh my gosh.

[0:16:28] Chris Denson: Right? Then, what happens is, you send it back. You go like, “Oh, this is cold, can you send it back?” And then there’s a delay that continues to happen. Now, the data would have just said like, “We need to get our food out fast, how do we get our food out faster,” right? We keep trying to solve the wrong problem but to immerse yourself or at least put a camera in there that allows you to like, “Well, what’s really going on here?” It gives you a little bit of another vantage point on how you problem solve.

[0:16:55] Charlie Hoehn: Wow, that’s a great story.

[0:16:59] Chris Denson: It’s not in the book, I should go back and rewrite it.

[0:17:02] Charlie Hoehn: Right. You’ve still got time.

[0:17:05] Chris Denson: “Everybody, send your books back, let me handwrite in them so they,” –

[0:17:10] Charlie Hoehn: So what is eat your brain? That is one of the guidelines in your book, what’s that about? Is that a Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom type thing?

[0:17:20] Chris Denson: They were eating monkey brains in that one.

[0:17:22] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s right.

[0:17:23] Chris Denson: Or you pull your heart out of your chest, that could be another one. So the eat your brain was actually, we worked with this series called iZombie on CW and we partnered them with a company called Emotiv, which actually does sort of brain visualizations. It’s almost like a meditation device. Fits on like a sweat band would fit and it’s connected to an app and it actually just tells you what part of your brain is most active at any given time. So it could be, you know, your problem solving mode, it could be like you’re in relaxation mode, maybe you’re angry like all these different areas that is four different parts of the brain that light up and then we just kind of used it for the experience where you would go in and what we did was we assigned those activity profiles, flavor profiles. So, you know, theta was the most active part we would pretend that that was sweet or salty. So that was like, this idea of zombie eating brains. But then, the next step was, you would get a 3D printed piece of candy that was shaped like a brain that corresponded with the most active parts of — it was purple, which would signify theta, then you get a purple piece of 3D printed candy and essentially, you got to eat your own brain. The rest of the chapter sort of explores this idea of actually just being your own size experiment, like exploring appetite for experimentation and how do you kind of treat your process or your company like a scientist would, like how do you want to understand the “what if” statements and really, the hidden gem of that project was really like, a first step in an exploration of how we could use wearable technology to actually examine somebody’s experience in any moment of time. So you know, you think that your store is amazing? There’s biometric technology out there that can help us understand the emotional state of a customer who enters a JC Penny like you mentioned earlier. You know, we can better understand like, yes, the data shows and yes the statistics show, but there’s no better data than my emotional state at any given moment. Did I eat your chocolate and you know, my heart rate increased and I was delighted? Or did I tense up and was it bitter? Right? There’s all these different ways of doing it. That was sort of that first step in that direction. So how do you develop experiments and you know, do them again and like build on them overtime? Like the example you gave, you know, walking around at JC Penny or at least understanding better how customers engage in that environment, you know, we can really use biometric information if we so choose or if it’s readily available to us or if we redesign around it to really understand what those emotional pain points are. You know, if you look at any brand slogan or tag line, it’s always some [inaudible] products. Whether it’s Snickers, done. Snickers really satisfies, Wells Fargo is done. See? See what I did there? I flipped it, it’s a collaboration between Wells Fargo and Snickers. A new candy bar made of money.

[0:20:20] Charlie Hoehn: And fees.

[0:20:22] Chris Denson: That the actual Bernie Madoff was investing in. Yeah, exactly. But no, you have this ability to actually measure someone’s emotional response to your brand’s promise and that’s an invaluable amount of information, it’s more valuable than what’s the route I take to work every day, which is, you know, is valuable information and you can serve me based on the pain points that I have in my hour long to work and to pick up kids and to do those things. But really, like at any given moment, what’s the emotional state of consumer and how can we make that better. So really that’s what that eating your brain experience was designed to take a baby step toward. Like if we can just give them an experiential moment and we give people a fun time, we can then take the next step of like track that measurement in a more serious or elongated way.

[0:21:18] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. I love the implications to that and it’s just got my mind spinning on what companies could do in the future, if they actually took that seriously, the actual bio markers of the emotional state of their customers is really exciting.

[0:22:15] Chris Denson: It’s been done a few times but not to the extent that where it’s sort of common place, right? I mean I can sight maybe three examples and that project being one of them. But you’re absolutely right, just what is indicative of is pretty amazing. This idea as it pertains to that chapter is definitely like, “Let’s continue experimenting and finding new ways to engage and inform ourselves and even to develop at our creativity around the products and services we’re in the market place.”

[0:22:46] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. Now you have a chapter called “kick some balls”. What is that about?

[0:22:54] Chris Denson: It’s exactly what it says, you ready Charlie?

[0:23:00] Charlie Hoehn: I’m ready.

[0:23:01] Chris Denson: One, two –

[0:23:02] Charlie Hoehn: I love – nothing is funnier than a good nut shot.

[0:23:07] Chris Denson: Exactly. It was in the idiocracy where it’s like, “Kick me in the balls!” It’s like the shows I used to watch. Now, I’ve had an amazing conversation with a guy by the name of Jon Werner, who is the head of innovation at Adidas or at the time we did our conversation he was and that year, they had just won the CES Best Innovation Award, which was for a connected soccer ball and, which you could kick it, it would tell you what is the speed of your foot, the rotation, what point of your foot you hit it on. Now when I asked Jon I was like, “All right so you run innovation at Adidas, what does your company hold you responsible for? What are they expecting you to deliver?” And he said, “Nothing,” and I was like, “What? What do you mean nothing?” And so the whole chapter starts to explore this idea of innovating for the sake of the practice and allowing a team or a group of individuals or putting aside a set of resources just for exploration and how do you do that and how do you assemble the right kind of team around that to be responsible with the corporation’s money, right? You don’t want to just like, “Well, two years later we’ve developed nothing.” You want to have smart people in place where like, “Oh what if we did this?” And that’s just one project of probably a dozen or so that he’s got forth. I mean everything from regenerating treads on sneakers to sneakers that automatically track your mileage and your impact and where you are placing your feet during your run, all sorts of things. But there’s something to be said about relieving the pressure on an individual or a team that is designed for innovation. I mean, that could be like startups answering to an investor. I mean like, “You know what? Give them a longer leash or at least for a period of time.” Or if you are an entrepreneur and your job is to go out and explore and bring back really interesting things that the company can use, it’s just explorers like what’s the best ecosystem to create around innovation to keep it moving forward?

[0:25:22] Charlie Hoehn: And how long of a leash or how big does the sandbox need to be? Because you obviously can’t have a completely open field and no constraints and sometimes what is the saying? The mother of innovation, necessity – I forget the saying but I mean basically, what have you found to be the ideal circumstances in environment or what have you seen for innovation to thrive?

[0:25:48] Chris Denson: The gate mile thing and even in that chapter we are talking about this but on the flip side some of the best innovations comes from constraint. This idea that look, we have two weeks, we have to do something that has never been done, we have $3,000 and it’s just you and six other people and you’re like, “What?” But you are in this – you have this defined very tight box that you’re working in and even in that instance, it’s still behaving freely, right? You don’t answer to the constraint, of course you fall for whatever barriers you may have but the emotional state even in times when your back’s up against the wall is still one of freedom with almost like it sounds like somebody in prison, now when I say it out loud. It’s like, “They can take my body but they can’t take my mind,” but it is true right? So while Jon is one end of the spectrum and there’s other teams like Guive Balooch who runs L’Oreal’s innovation incubator. And even a team I run at OMD or like somewhere in the middle, right? We do have to answer to clients into the agency but we are given a long leash to be explored and the company’s design such that they trust us. Trust is a big part of this whole equation and we talk about that as well. You know, Adidas trusts Jon and his team to deliver something. Similarly, OMD trusts our team to curate and to find and to explore and bring back relative things. And not just come back with like, “Hey, look at this foldable bicycle.” You’re like, “Okay great. Now what are we going to do now?” And if these teams are formed they know what your business goals are, they know where the company might be pivoting, they are informed enough to make sound explorations but to answer your question, I don’t think there is a right amount of freedom or not.

[0:27:50] Charlie Hoehn: I am curious, which company are you most impressed with in terms of innovation, just how they go about doing things and what they are producing right now?

[0:28:01] Chris Denson: I won’t say it’s my favorite but the first one that comes to mind because it has been the headlines lately is the Amazon. Amazon totally did a 180 of what we the public expected of them when they bought Whole Foods and then made a move for Target and they’re like, “But that’s brick and mortar and you guys are the kings of digital transaction. Like click a button and someone shows up to my home.” But then as a brand they, their content platform, with the introduction of Amazon Alexa and this like how can voice start to play a role in how we interact with the world? And that just makes transaction, like I have a couple of Amazon Echo devices and I don’t think I’ve ordered anything on them. I’ve used them for a ton of other things but there’s that. There’s Amazon Studios has created their own product. So there’s so many different directions that they’ve gone in all around transaction. Even to the point where I am like, “Hey,” – almost admittedly I would say, “I don’t know what they are set up to do.” You know, if you’re looking at Google, it started off as a search engine and everything else is around that whether you are searching for a place to go and then it’s on Google maps or you are searching for content on YouTube or you’re searching for experience like a Google tilt brush and it’s all VR and art creation. Where Amazon is really just like, “You know what? Let’s try some stuff,” right? And their sound business decision that’s rooted in real business but at the end of the day, they are almost undefinable by category of industry or company.

[0:29:42] Charlie Hoehn: What’s your favorite story in the book?

[0:29:45] Chris Denson: I’m going to go with the very — the last chapter is sort of the bonus chapter. This is like the ethos of the book, which is where we set up like the central rules. We’re breaking the central rules and it starts off to saying that, “Look you may try everything in this book and some of it will work, some of it won’t or whatever but you now have enough information and hopefully process by which you can do it anyway,” right? Whatever that vision is you have is the world is telling you that it is impossible. Keep doing it anyway, even to the point – as a matter of fact, the chapter is called “Be Dumb Enough to Do it Anyway” and that’s rooted in a story from a friend of mine about the name of Victor Pineda and Victor is severely disabled. He has been in the wheelchair for I think since he was about five or six years old. He has a PhD from Stanford, he is a filmmaker, he was appointed by President Obama to be sort of an ambassador to persons with disabilities. I actually got to work with him on a project in Nairobi where the UN had changed the policy on how to – on civil rights for persons with disabilities and so we were there to implement new ways of reporting and communicating amongst the entire continent for persons with disabilities sort of violation stat. But to see what this guy does to get up and do the thing that he loves, despite what the physical world around him is like or despite how people look at him, is pretty amazing. We are in airports in developing countries and people are coming up to me going like, “Oh my gosh is your friend okay?” I’m like, “Ask him, he’s right here.” I got to experience that once, for him it is a daily thing. He has a breathing machine and the breathing machine breathes for him and he has back up batteries for that and so on and so forth. But married, kids, also just an innovator in his own right and an inventor of sorts and so there’s this triumphant emotional connection with the innovation story. Not because we are trying to make a name for ourselves or because we’re trying to be clever business people and all the things are part of this as well but the true innovation actually comes out of your personal passion and what you’re willing to go through to see it through. Even going back to the Amazon thing we just talked about, you know, people laugh and we’ve heard this stories time and time again. It’s like, “Oh people laughed at such and such when they started this.” Netflix or Reed Hastings, Blockbuster was like, “We’re not doing that. It’s dumb, but good luck!” Wait minute, you guys good luck. So there’s all of these indicators that are kind of like, defy our –

[0:32:36] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah and the funny thing about Netflix is I think it, over the last decade, it’s the most growth of any stock even greater than Apple by a large factor and like you said, they were laughed at when they were first starting out and they’re just a power house now. So you’ve done the Innovation Crush Podcast. I want to touch on this because you’ve got over half a million subscribers. I think 700,000 subscribers, really popular show. If people were listening to this and they wanted to follow you on there, what episode do you recommend they start with?

[0:33:14] Chris Denson: What episode do you start with? I mean, Dan Goods is a good one. You know anytime I am asked what’s my favorite episode I go to that one. I also go to Nolan Bushnell and Brent Bushnell, I mentioned it a little bit earlier, they created Chuck E. Cheese and Atari but his son has a company called Two Bit Circus and they are doing some amazing work and I’ve gotten to do a few projects with them as well but it was a fun dynamic. Especially like – I’m okay – some of the listeners of my show or yours either have kids or will or there is something about passing the baton and how do you do that? All of this stuff that we do, yes it is great for the world and for our careers but the generational thinking is how do you past the baton? Like you and I will be long forgotten in a 100 years, and not that long away. So maybe even less than that, if I keep it up. No but it was fun and even at one point I asked them both a trait that they admire about the other that they wished they had. And to hear them say that’s so good like the humanization of the innovation story and then somebody like more recently, Linda Boff the CMO of GE, newly appointed relatively speaking but they’re on a mission to hire 20,000 women by 2020 and the way they think about GE as a consumer brand is pretty remarkable and I think that is a really great example of thinking different and not do them like Apple. But it’s like we treat ourselves this way and a phrase I love, which is how you see yourselves is how the world sees you, right? So GE doesn’t see themselves the way the world sees them. They continue to show us multiple time and time again that this is who we are and that’s the line I’m at, feel good every time I encounter a piece of GE messaging let alone what the company builds and makes and does. It is just pretty fascinating.

[0:35:22] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah and one more question about your podcast is, what’s been your favorite thing that’s come about because of it? Has people written in to you to say you’ve helped them innovate better at their company, anything like that?

[0:35:35] Chris Denson: This moment right now, Charlie. This thing that is happening.

[0:35:38] Charlie Hoehn: Oh I am so sorry Chris.

[0:35:39] Chris Denson: Every decision that I have made in life has led me to this moment and I’ll add to that, I like when I get the – and maybe it’s just how I am built but I like when I get the really unexpected response. One of my favorite ones, a friend of mine listened to your interview with Chamillionaire, advices a ton of startups, has multiple businesses and became a resident at California’s largest venture fund and building stuff there and we were talking about like hip-hop. And how hip-hop was just a vessel for him to get out of his neighborhood and we talk about business and technology and all that stuff and this guy’s friend says she listened to that episode and she quit smoking and I was like, “Okay? Like where did that come from?” And low and behold, there was one point in time where Chamillionaire says, “You know, I have never drink or smoke because I just want to be clear. I want my experience of the world to be one of clarity,” and that was her take away. So, you know, I think I’m sure that even on your show just like these surprise nuggets pop up that just resonate with people and I’m thinking it’s going to inspire people to create the next maker studios or despite what I am think the outcome will be is this sort of hyper personal decisions that people make and I have heard that a few times. Everyone was definitely like a needle in the haystack but that was your takeaway? Okay that is surprising and amazing. The other one is that I discovered a tweet, they didn’t even tweet at me or the show or anything else. State University and it was like “Listening to the Andy Walsh episode.” Andy Walsh was the head of human performance at Redbull and they basically streamed an entire episode during their all staff meeting. So there they are their off sights and they’ve got the whole staff gathered up and they streamed 42, 43 minutes however long that conversation was at their meeting. And so they literally sat around in the conference room and listened to an interview and that was super surprising. So you know there’s all sorts of surprises that I enjoy uncovered.

[0:37:53] Charlie Hoehn: It’s the unexpected, those are so much fun to get. That’s really cool and you helped a woman stop smoking, that’s awesome.

[0:38:01] Chris Denson: I know, it definitely is.

[0:38:02] Charlie Hoehn: Cool. Chris, this has been awesome man. Can you leave our listeners maybe with a challenge. Something they can do from your book this week that can improve their work or change their life in some way apart from stopping smoking, which may be a little too much to ask?

[0:38:22] Chris Denson: Stop smoking crack, kids. No, I think the first thing that comes to mind and maybe it is not the best exercise but it is also is in the book is to have fun and there’s actually an exercise that I recommend, which is take an old like a throwback series like a Happy Days or Love Boat or something that we’re all familiar with but came out a long time ago and just play a game and say, “What if the show is coming out in 2019? How would it live as a brand and how would we market it using technology and innovation?” And some of the examples I get, at least in the case of Happy Days would be like, you know, maybe Spotify would have a bump functionality because if you remember, Fonzarelli, used to bump the juke box, he never put money in it and just bumped it and it would come on and it would play his song, right? Or Pat Marita for instance, owning the diner, maybe you did a Japanese, American fusion food truck that toured around to different cities and festivals and things like that? You know, maybe Joanie and Chachi have Tinder profiles and you know.

[0:39:29] Charlie Hoehn: Maybe the Fonz jump over a virtual shark.

[0:39:34] Chris Denson: Exactly, see? You got it. It’s a fun exercise that doesn’t have any consequence, right? Because most of us are on assignment of some sorts as opposed to just doing it like creating for the sake of creating. Give yourself the set of I don’t know, circumstances or products that you can just experiment on and aren’t your own, there’s no downside to doing it.

[0:39:58] Charlie Hoehn: I love it, great exercise. You have the innovation crush podcast, you’re on Twitter @densenology. Anywhere else our listeners can follow you?

[0:40:09] Chris Denson: @innovationcrush or @densonology. I think you can find most of my musings. follow me everywhere. I’m Google-able, Chris Densen. There is another Chris Densen who plays basketball and usually he’s the number one searched so I’m trying to beat him. Please just Google me guys. He and I are actually friends on Twitter. So I think he’ll welcome the challenge.

[0:40:30] Charlie Hoehn: Excellent, well this has been great, thank you so much Chris.

[0:40:33] Chris Denson: Thank you.

[0:40:35] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Chris Densen for being on the show, you can buy his book, Crushing the Box, on Amazon.com. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about book with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.