Rightsizing Innovation for the Enterprise

J Schneider, managing director of the consulting practice at Dorn Group, answers the questions ‘What does innovation mean today?’, ‘Why is it important to have the customer at the center of innovation?’, and ‘How do you build a culture of innovation?’.

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Video Transcript:

Tom Lovell: And welcome everybody. This session we’re going to be starting today is going to be Rightsizing Innovation for the Enterprise. I’m Tom Lovell, manufacturing and distribution industry lead from Hike2. During the session, you’ll hear from one of our partners in the manufacturing industry about how they’re helping their clients innovate like never before. We have a lot of time for questions at the end of the session, but if you feel like or compelled to, feel free to use the Q&A feature at the bottom of the Zoom. And with that, I’ll introduce our distinguished guest, J Schneider. How are you doing, J? Yep.

J Schneider: Hi. Good. How are you?

Tom Lovell: Good. J is the managing director for the consulting group at Dorn. Dorn is a management consulting firm that provides transformational growth for manufacturers. J not only is the managing director, but also an author, public speaker and proven leader with over 20 years of experience in developing and implementing transformational growth strategies with a variety of global industries. Thanks for joining us, J.

J Schneider: Thanks Tom. Thanks for having me. Sounds like it’s been a great session and event so far, so I’m glad to be a part of it.

Tom Lovell: Yeah, no, it’s been good so far having people like yourself that are experts and really [sneeze 00:01:24] in their areas of the world has been great. During this session, we’re going to ask you a couple questions and I’d love to take your take on how you see them and hopefully it’ll spur a really great conversation. So with that, Abby, if you go to the first slide. Knowing Dorn and the breadth of customers you work with, I’m really, really interested what that means to your clients?

J Schneider: I get this question a lot, Tom, and one of the things that is asked is, what should I expect? And what I would tell you is here’s what it used to mean. What it used to mean, even earlier in the day, when the teams were talking about this is product, product, product. We make a product, we spend years in development and we engineer the death out of that thing. And then we pray for the best when we release it and launch it. And we hope the quality is there to support what our customer is looking for. So it was a very linear kind of path. I have an idea. Tom came up with this great idea. It got presented to management. Management says yes, with vigor, let’s go make this thing.

J Schneider: And then you kind of go build a trial and a beta, and then you go release it and then you’re off. But today it’s a very different story. And when I say today, I’m really talking about the last three to four years. And even most of the mid teens and decade that we’ve seen. Today, it’s really gone way beyond the product. And in most cases, great innovation isn’t really product-centric anymore. It’s around the service or the channel, the way the brands are managed and articulated out in the marketplace, business models, the systems, whether they’re Hike2 type systems or other systems within your business, those are all becoming highly innovative and they’re creating differentiated value for the customers.

J Schneider: So innovation, this idea that it’s a thing or it’s a tangible item or something you put on the shelf, that’s gone. I think we all kind of agree on that. The challenge is that organizations haven’t really developed the infrastructure to change to that model. Their infrastructure was designed as a process-based, product-based infrastructure. I have a product, I go through my steps and phases, and then I release it. So now if I’m trying to innovate with my brand or my channel or my customer engagement or digital transformation, as an example, I can’t really follow that same process. Digital information. Isn’t a product per se, that sits on a shelf. It’s very, very different from that. So as they look beyond the product, companies today, and what that means to our company today, is that they also need to kind of adapt to innovating in that new subtype or new style of environments.

Tom Lovell: And sometimes, I’ve heard it alluded to this servitization, that the overall industry no longer is am I selling you my product and steak dinner. Now it’s warranties, services on top of product to compel them to do more with organizations. I mean, when you’re talking about, what are some of the … When you’re talking about those services on top of it, what have you seen that really differentiates with that innovation?

J Schneider: Well, I think customers today or buyers today resonate with … A, it’s how you’re engaging with those customers and what you’re engaging them with. The old style was I come out with a new product and I literally just vomit everything out I can possibly vomit out as quickly as I can about this product and hope they buy it. Today, I think buyers, they’re way past that. Buyers are looking at the experience, how it is to buy, how easy it is to do business with. Is it correct information? Do I have the information I need to make a decision beyond the product? Meaning, hey, the product does X, but to your point, warranty or availability. Is it installed for me? Is it serviced by you? Is it available parts for 10 or 20 years? Whatever that may be.

J Schneider: And if you’re there, then you’re talking about industrial space and the consumer side’s a little bit different because the life cycles are different than a consumer side, but for most industrial manufacturers, it’s really around how are you getting access to that information as a buyer and how is that manufacturer or distributor, in many cases, really kind of supporting my business. So I’m looking for innovation that helps me in my business, whatever I am doing, win more business, help me grow my business, make it easy for me.

J Schneider: If I have to spend two hours on the phone with you to order something that should take 45 minutes or 30 minutes, that doesn’t seem overly practical in today’s high-paced, busy world. So I think the services, the engagement, information, ease of doing business are all top of list for us. And we see that in our surveys quite often when we ask our clients and we ask our clients’ clients, “What is attracting you to the brand?” And more often than not, it comes back as, “We work with the brand because it’s easy to do business with, It’s got the information I need, and I know that the product will do what I expect it to do.” But product is typically not number one on that list. There’s usually several three or four factors above that now. And I think, some of those we touched on and I’m sure we can list dozens more in this session.

Tom Lovell: Absolutely. It’s amazing. You mentioned it’s been happening not only in the last year and a half, the last three or five years, but since the teen. So I think it’s just been accelerated over the last 18 months or so, especially from the services standpoint. And have you seen like the services impacted by most everybody, because this is new for manufacturers, is most of their employees being remote for a lot of that, has that affected their ability to service?

J Schneider: I think it has affected it. In many cases, I think it’s improved it. I think people are better engaged. They’re not spending 45 minutes each way in traffic. Their availability and their engagement, I think, is better in some cases because they really kind of are able to zone in and focus on what they’re trying to accomplish as a firm or a company. So I think that has improved. On the innovation side, if I look at pure innovation and the remoteness of that, I think that has changed over the last 18 months, this idea that we huddle up in a room and we think about a whiteboard. We’re in Dorn’s innovation collaboration space right now. And there’s just, this is half the room and there’s walls of whiteboards and everything here.

J Schneider: And this space is really designed around, hey, this idea that we’re going to just kind of get in a room and create a new widget or new idea. That’s all been done digitally now. And the source of innovation is really kind of changing. And so it’s really changing the way that people engage with one another. So today it’s all digital and we’re doing it remotely, but there is something to be said for kind of still getting back in their room. But I think we’re able to accomplish more without having to maybe do it in the traditional way that we had in the past.

Tom Lovell: Yeah, it’s completely changed. And I think not only manufacturing, but you could level in all industries as well, as we heard from Melissa and some of the other people speaking earlier today.

J Schneider: Yep.

Tom Lovell: Going onto our second question today, you touched on it a little bit, but why is it so important to have a customer at the center of innovation? I think you talked about a little bit earlier that going from product to customer-focused, but why is that important?

J Schneider: Well, we do a lot of work with our clients and companies, industrial manufacturers, commercial companies, service based businesses, what have you. And the question I get a lot is where is the source of innovation? What is the source of innovation? And in many cases, it was a product idea, but the answer today is, is the customer the center of that innovation? The answer is yes. And what I mean by that is as a product-centric company, you think of it in terms of I make a product and sell a product and that’s all I need to do. But as a customer-centric organization, I really need to kind of build a business around what customer values. And the customer values your product, obviously, that’s well-understood, but they also value how you work with them, how you deliver product, all these other things.

J Schneider: So it’s important to have the customer at the center of innovation, because ultimately that’s who you’re there to serve. You’re not there to serve all the individuals in your company. Your company exist this because that customer has a need. That’s about as plain simple as you can kind of make it. Without that need, there’s no reason for you to exist. So the customer should be in the center of your business. Now, customers are finicky. They change their mind a lot. They do things that are unexplainable. Their behavior is not predictable all the time. So you can’t necessarily have a customer say, “I would love for this to do X, Y, Z.” And then go off and build it. And your customer says, “Yeah, that was last week. I don’t really need that anymore. That’s not today.” So there has to be some discipline associated with that because … And that’s where your experience comes in, as a firm, as a company, that I have to apply my discipline and my knowledge and my expertise around what the customers seek to better improve their business.

J Schneider: So two to three years ago, R&D group would say, “Hey, we got this new idea. We have this wonderful, great idea.” But as progress has been made, you kind of break that down and you look at market-back innovation. Now, I didn’t say customer-back innovation. I said, market-back innovation. And there’s a difference there. And I’ll explain it to you. Customer-back innovation to us is your customers, what do your existing customers value and what do they need to be successful tomorrow. Market is, it’s a broader scope and a broader view. Let’s say you have 10% of the market. Sure. Which for a lot of industrial manufacturers, it’s a good day.

J Schneider: If you’re Apple, you’ll probably cry. But for most industrial manufacturers, that’s pretty good. But 90% of that market, you don’t serve today. They have needs, they have things that they are trying to accomplish with products similar to what you have and others. So how do you reach those and understand what their needs are so you can better improve your business so you can serve that expanding customer base. And that’s some of the things that we work with clients on, is explain that customer-back, it might be a little short-sighted for you when it comes to innovation. Think about it in the broader terms. Now, it’s not easy to reach people that don’t buy from you because you don’t know who they are now. You know they’re out there, you know that maybe a competitor of yours sold, they’re strong in Southern California or they’re strong in the Midwest or in the Southeast as an example, but they have a presence and you can kind of capture that they’ve made some progress in those markets and you can go after and talk to those customers, research them, say, “Hey, why do you love these guys?”

J Schneider: Understand what value they bring, study their innovation. But at the end of the day, Tom, that customer, if they’re really not in the middle of your innovation, it’s really kind of a signal that they’re really not in the middle of your business. And if you’re moving from a product-centric business to a customer-centric business is really around having that customer at the center of your business in its entirety, not just about innovation, but operationally. If your customer prefers large orders, send them large orders. If they prefer dozens of small orders, well, I could not give them small orders, but they’re probably not going to be overly happy and they’re going to probably look for alternatives to that. But the customer needs to be able to understand that value of the innovation that you’re sending or that you’re providing as an example.

J Schneider: And by putting in the middle of your business, the entire business now is focused on driving and explaining that value to them. So it’s not just the R and D group that’s explaining it or the operations or the sales team or the marketing group, the entire company is really trying to put it in a frame of reference that the customer can understand. And they can articulate that value and say, “Yes, this is exactly what I need to be successful. I love what you guys are doing. And we’re going to continue to partner with you to do that.” And this was very, very obvious in the last session, where we talked about kind of how Hike2 has really been able to be instrumental in their digital transformation growth. And the innovation that you’ve had been able to make that transition for them. So they understood that value and they could apply that to their business and make a transformational change as part of that.

Tom Lovell: And knowing you work with a lot of industrial manufacturers whose business models have fundamentally changed. It was always going to that way, but this concept of they’re used to going directly to distributors, to dealers are very B2B model. And all of a sudden, they’re going to end consumers, whether it’s through the Amazon channel or something else, that they’re all of a sudden they’re B2B2C. And how do you see and how do you help them get through those hurdles?

J Schneider: Well, you’re right. Years ago, you would ask the question, who’s your customer? They would name their five favorite distributors. That was kind of their world. It’s like, well, these guys are my favorite distributors, but they’re also my favorite customer. And that’s my customer there. And what’s beyond that, they didn’t really have a great view on. In the mid-2000s, after the Great Recession, companies started to have to start driving demand by pulling that demand through. So they had to become B2B2C. That was a fundamental shift that needed to occur because they needed to be able to reach that end user and get them to pull that order or pull that demand through so the manufacturer could effectively continue to drive sales and growth in a slowing softening economy. And that’s ultimately one of the great drivers of this change is, hey, I’m not getting the love I used to get from my market. I need to increase my sales. I’m getting a little nervous. I need to reach these end users to convince them.

J Schneider: And that’s kind of where some of that work had started, but yeah, it’s really kind of an idea of reaching that end user is imperative today. Now, you can do it in a variety of ways. There’s innovative ways to do, there’s are traditional ways to do that. But whatever you do, we say this a lot here at Dorn with our clients, don’t do nothing. That’s the worst thing you can do. So whether you talk to one client or end user a week, or every couple months, it doesn’t necessarily matter where you start. The important point is that you are able to have access to them in some form, through a survey, through reviews, online chats, site visits with your distributor, a variety of tools at your disposal to use to capture information.

J Schneider: Social media is a great way to get that, get that feedback and get that information, but continues to solicit that feedback so you understand what they value and then partner with your distributor to jointly go and provide that value. And from an innovation standpoint, we see a lot of work today in the distributors and the manufacturers working together to jointly go provide value where the distributor can add value of theirs, the manufacturer adds value of theirs, and then together, they can create a larger value offering than just one or other doing it on their own or doing all the heavy lifting on their own.

Tom Lovell: Absolutely. I think it’s major change. I mean, I’ve been in the manufacturing space for 20, 25 years, and I think it’s been one of the major changes. It used to be almost feel an adversarial relationship between the manufacturer and distributor. And now it is, there’s cooperation there, they’re working together. And when you talk about all your voice of the customer or techniques, previous projects, whether it is IR-driven or business-driven, the voice of the customer, they never actually go to distributor or the end consumer. They’re afraid to kind of open the kimono a little bit. And they’d rather just stay in their own echo chamber. And I’m curious, from your perspective, some of the value that organizations you’ve worked with have going and opening it up and being more cooperative with your organizations [crosstalk 00:18:46]

J Schneider: Yeah. It’s eye-opening for them. And most of the time, what we see is they didn’t know. It wasn’t a question of, whether they got something wrong or right. There’s this information they just did not understand or know or have access to. So it has been transformational to get the organizations to really engage with their distributors differently, as well as their end users, and have that come back into the organization as we’re not really guessing anymore. And if I could give you kind of one area that was probably the most impactful is we’re no longer guessing on what that value or what that customer really wants is. And we’re not really guessing on what distributor is or is not thinking or strategizing about with this market. Often we, the distributor buys our product, but we don’t really understand how they’re trying to position or what they’re doing in the market.

J Schneider: And I think that collaboration has really helped there, but it’s been eye-opening for a lot of these manufacturers. And as a result, they’re getting really smart with innovation. They’re realizing that innovation isn’t a linear path anymore. It’s iterative, it’s a circle. And I don’t have to solve the entire problem because my customers aren’t really asking me to solve this problem so I don’t need to go make a Frankenstein, which is probably what I would’ve done 10 years ago. What I do now is I can make smaller versions, smaller changes, and compound those changes on top of one another over an iterative cycle that says, “Well, this year we’re going to make these three enhancements. The following year a couple more and then a couple more and ultimately continue to drive that.”

J Schneider: But that partnership and that value is allowing them to be iterative in that so they’re not guessing, that if they’re going to add three things to a product or add three things to a service, as an example, or change the way they sell or change the way they ship, that they can understand that deeper and be able to make those investments together, with the partners that they have, not just I’m doing all the heavy lifting investment, and then I’ll have my partners just implement for me.

Tom Lovell: Absolutely. It’s amazing how things have changed. And I think you can even see it when you’re working you at conferences or you’re a manufacturing organizations, is there’s a lot more of working together, even with competitors. I think you’ll start to see that, that they’re framing, they’re buttoning things together. Because at the end of the day, a distributor, you’re not their only vendor. They’re going across. So when is it best to pass it along to one of your competitors, when in the future, you might be their preferred vendor for a different product line or a solution.

J Schneider: Yeah, and there’s one thing I wanted to add to that, Tom, that you mentioned, is about the change. And we do a lot of work with companies today, and I’m sure everybody on the session today could probably agree that some of the more difficult areas is the change management to allow this to happen. We don’t do it that way. That’s not how we’ve become successful for the first 30 years of our existing. We don’t need that. We do it this way. And that internal change can be difficult. It can be difficult to manage as the company evolves to putting the customer in the center of their business versus the product, or versus, “Hey, this is the way we do it.” That change can cause friction. And we typically try to break that down for them in a variety of ways, but the most simple way is, hey, let’s all kind of understand the overarching value to the company, to our customer, to the value and delivery and buying chain that occurs between and the end customer.

J Schneider: And this change is good for us. It’s good for the end user, customer. And it’s good for our partners that support us in our work to deliver this product. And so when they see that, when the organization sees it and they understand how this change and how this work all ultimately benefits the work they do, as well as the customers’, and it creates a very sticky relationship, and it creates a higher engagement and repeat buyers, that ultimately helps with that change and understanding that it’s really a benefit to your organization versus some newfangled crazy idea that that someone came up with that we’re going to adopt, that may or may not work. I think the data is pretty solid that as the organization, if you are aligned and you have that internal alignment about how this can benefit your business, whether it’s technology-based innovation or even as simple as packaging or process based innovation, all of that is designed to better support that customer, then I think you’re going to have a much easier go at it as a firm.

Tom Lovell: So with this changing focus to the end customer and moving away from a product-centric organization to that customer, and dealing with change management, how does that fundamentally change a manufacturer? Do they go through actual organizational changes, as far as roles and responsibilities? Can you talk about that a little bit?

J Schneider: Yeah. I mean, some of it does go through … There is some functional changes that need to occur. Envision an industrial manufacturer from 50 years ago. Very different structure than a matrix based organization today. The source of how they out operate their business today is very different. And where we see companies struggles or trying to apply a legacy infrastructure model to a new way of doing business. Amazon did not exist like it does today. It did not exist like it does today 20 years ago. I think originally they sold books or something like that, where they started. Kudos to Jeff. But the point is, is that they haven’t really evolved, their organization, to meet the customer demand. That’s number one. Number two is they certainly haven’t evolved the organization to actually go beyond what the customer’s needs are today.

J Schneider: Meaning that, hey, I’m trying to get onto this e-commerce platform. I’m trying to get digital transformation, but I know that I’m playing catch-up still. Literally, I’m kind of behind the time. So as an organization, you first have to understand, is this good for our business? Is this where our business needs to go? And now, we hear this a lot and I get this question a lot is, we don’t need to do all this stuff. This is kind of not what we do as a company. And we don’t hear it as often as we did probably five years ago, but we still hear it sometimes. And the answer is simple. I think this was in maybe your 11 o’clock or 10 o’clock session was what happens if you don’t innovate? Well, you die. It’s simple. I mean, I’m not trying to be dramatic there, but that’s what happens today.

J Schneider: And back in the mid-2000s, you could die a slow death over 10 years. Today, you’ll die a death over a year quickly. And you’ll find yourself on the outside looking in. It’s not to be overly dramatic, but the market’s pretty relentless today. Buyers control the market. Your ability to change is imperative. So we work with companies and being able to show them that you might need to change functional groups. You might need to change your structure. You might need to change the how you do something, but to do all that, you need to explain why this is imperative to your business, because there’s individuals that say, “Look, we just don’t … That’s not what we do. It’s not what we have done.”

J Schneider: Now, everybody can change. But the challenge is I need to get an organization of 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 people to do that together and do it quickly. I don’t have 10 years to figure it out anymore. I have a year, 18 months, to really kind of figure out what is going to happen here. So they look to firms like us to say, “Well, I’m late, we’re late to the party accelerate.” They look to firms like Hike2 and say, “Okay, here’s where I am. Get me back in the game. I need to get forward here and how can we do that?” So I think using partners, using firms, outside firms that can help you do that, I think, is imperative versus trying to home grow it, figure it out on your own, trial and error. I think the time for trial and error is probably behind a lot of companies at this point. A lot, have we heard of some of those today, they are well on their way with digital transformation and making the investments they need, but others are really, really kind of at a point where it’s like, I can’t really wait anymore and I need to do something.

Tom Lovell: And absolutely, I think that’s … If anything, there is, you need to get in the game at this point, if you’re not doing something. And like you said, you’re running the risk of dying or at least being acquired and sold off for parts.

J Schneider: Right. Which is worse.

Tom Lovell: Yeah. Which is absolutely worse. So I think the days of slowly moving towards something are going through that as well. And we talked a little bit about the last session, is going from product-centric to customer-centric, the product centric methodology and mindset is avoid risk in all cases, focus on being able to iterate and when you talk about Six Sigma and things like that, you don’t want any absolution around quality. But when you go to the customer, you’re able to repeat, you’re able to … I shouldn’t say repeat, but you’re able to expose yourself in a way that … Throw out beta versions of something, get a small … A test group and be able to work through these things. Because the first time you’re going to go through something, it may or may not be perfect.

J Schneider: Correct. And that was very popular years ago in technology. I spent better part of 12 years managing software development groups and all kinds of tech groups and alpha, beta, GA release type situations. That’s really changed a lot. That’s not kind of the way that they do it now, but to your point was, if you were kind of the old school company, it was quality, quality, quality, quality. And we’re not suggesting that quality’s not important. It is very important. It could quickly wreck a brand better than anything as we know. However, there’s a balance. And at some point your customer is saying, “Well, quality’s important, but it may not be the most important thing.” Why? Because most companies inherently probably over-engineer, over-design, over-spec, what the customer really values out of the product. Not in all cases, but a lot of cases. How many things do we own that we rarely use all the features? Rarely.

J Schneider: Now, it doesn’t mean that the features aren’t valuable or they don’t have some value, but it’s not often we completely max out the value or the features of what it is. So I would say there’s balance there. I wanted to touch back on risk. And like you said, Six Sigma and some of these other process-based systems were really designed about avoiding risk. Now, we look at risk in two axises, the likelihood of occurring and the impact to the business. Now, if the impact is high, but the likelihood is extremely low, that’s a different type of risk than a high likelihood, but low impact. If we know for certain it’s going to happen, if we don’t do these things or don’t innovate this way or provide this type of service, it could be detrimental.

J Schneider: So think of it as a simple grid, likelihood and impact. If you really start breaking down where that falls, you will find that in most cases, the risk with an iterative process, an agile-based process where you’re not creating Frankensteins for two years and hoping it for the best, that the risk is really, really low today, that spending six months or three months on innovative product doesn’t carry the same risk as it did five or six years ago, even 10 years ago.

J Schneider: So we measure it that way to give companies the idea that, hey, the risk here is real, but it’s not … Even if it happened, the impact is so low that we’re really not going to have to actively manage that risk because it’s not really an impact to your business. Now, the ones that are low likelihood, but they are very detrimental to your business, we need to maybe pay attention to a little more. So you want to balance that risk. All risk is not treated the same.

Tom Lovell: Absolutely. Fantastic insight there. I think a lot of organizations, they hear risk and it’s like all of a sudden shut down.

J Schneider: Correct.

Tom Lovell: You really do need to look at it in our new kind of lens with that. I really appreciate the time. That concludes our planned questions. I wanted to open it up to questions and answers from the audience. There was one question I did see as far as it must be somebody coming at the start of their journey, but their question is, “Us being a new organization to really innovation, what are some areas that you typically start with a client at the beginning of their journey?”

J Schneider: It’s a great question. If they’re a new organization, where do you start? And it’s really kind of around, let’s take a look at your capabilities for one. Let’s take a look at your resources. Don’t try to over-innovate or go beyond what you’re capable of doing well. Nothing’s worse than crappy innovation. I’m sorry, not to be rude, but nothing’s worse than that because no one enjoys it. You don’t enjoy making it and your customers don’t enjoy using it. So nobody wins. What I would say is at the start of your journey, number one, talk to your customers, understand the market to the best that you can. Two, understand gaps in the market today. Where can you create space for yourself? Where can you create space for what you guys do well? Three, which might even be 2A, understand what you really excel at and what you would excel at as a firm, innovate around that excellence that you provide.

J Schneider: That is a very kind of different approach where individuals will say, “Well, I make a product.” But what does it you really good at as a firm? In some cases, what we see today is the best things that they’re good at isn’t related to the product. The product is good. It’s a great product, but it’s not really where they excel. They might excel in customer service or education or training. A great example is, is we had a brand new brand that we work with. They just launched about a year and a half ago, but the entire company, it’s a brand new division of a larger company. Didn’t exist three years ago. Their entire strategy is around helping their customers win more business. They’ve got a list of products, a fairly sizable list of products, but that’s almost never the focus.

J Schneider: The focus is most exclusively on we are here so you can grow your business. That is it. Whether it’s how to sell these products, how to install them, how to use them, how to make more money with them, how to educate your buyer about the value of these. And then, yeah, we’ll get to the product at some point. Don’t worry about that. And it’s really kind of transformed their business. Now, they’re up 300% this year. Now, it’s on a smaller base, but they went from a few million dollars to tens of millions of dollars in 18 months out of nothing. Now, it’s not a typical story. But what I would argue is don’t think of it in purely the terms of a product. Think about it about all the things that you can excel at, all the things that you value and then deliver that to your customers.

J Schneider: And start there. Don’t start with something that you’re not good at. Start with what you really are exceptional at that you feel your customers would value and then move from there. You look at companies that are innovative and or you look at companies that are starting that journey. And they’re like, well, they look at Apple or they look at maybe a company like the Walt, or they look at a company … Variety of companies. The challenge is, there’s aren’t really comparisons. They’re in a different place. The Walt is probably releasing a new product every day, every other day. That’s not who they are. Apple is a different animal altogether, or even any other telecommunications companies. You’re very different from that. Understand your business. Understand the market gaps. Understand what you’re good at. And then don’t bite off too much that you can excel at. Do it iterative style. Take what you can do and then build upon that, week in a week out.

J Schneider: And then the last thing I would say is create a culture of innovation. And creating a culture of innovation is really around having the customer in the center of your business and the innovation around serving that customer to the absolute best ability you can through existing services, new services, new ideas, variations of what you’re already doing and then kind of continue to expand on that. And then as a new company, I guess the other advice I would give or other place I would start that journey is don’t be satisfied with where you are. Continue to push the envelope. The risk you’re taking is probably not as risky as it may seem. So use the likelihood and impact your business as maybe a way to kind of gauge that and say, “Well, it’s risky, but the likelihood’s low. So maybe we’re not really taking that much risk.” Because that could stop you. It could prevent you from pushing yourself to go beyond what you think is capable of.

Tom Lovell: Yeah. I mean, that’s fantastic insights. I think our audience, if they’re not blown away by some of those insights, I don’t know.

J Schneider: Let’s hope. Let’s hope.

Tom Lovell: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate the time today, J. I think it was a great conversation. Some of your insights you provided, I think should really help a lot of organizations. And encourage to anybody on call to reach out to J at the Dorn group or us at Hike2. We can put you in contact with them. I think it was an amazing conversation. I really appreciate it, J.