Ep. 258 - Robyn Bolton, Founder at Mile Zero & Formerly with P&G / Innosight on Corporate Innovation & Navigating Disruption

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Robyn Bolton, Founder and Chief Navigator at Mile Zero. Robin and I talk about her experiences in the world of corporate innovation from her days at P&G to Innosight to today. And what are some of the stories and things that she's learned to help companies navigate the world of disruption.

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Interview Transcript with Robyn Bolton, Chief Navigator at Mile Zero on Corporate Innovation and Disruption

Brian Ardinger: [00:00:30] Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another guest. Today we have Robyn Bolton. She is the founder and chief navigator at Mile Zero. Welcome to the show, Robyn. 

Robyn Bolton: [00:00:53] Thank you, Brian. Thrilled to be here. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:00:55] Well, I'm excited to have you here for a number of different reasons. You've spent your career at the forefront of corporate innovation. So, you worked as an intrapreneur at P & G. I believe you were part of the team that launched the Swiffer and the, and the Swiffer Wet Jet. So, congrats on that. You were a partner at Innosight, Clayton Christensen's growth consulting firm, and now you're the founder of Mile Zero, which is an innovation consulting and coaching firm.

You have been around corporate innovation, both inside corporations, doing it, helping companies grow and innovate. And then outside as a consultant. Where have you seen the most progress from companies when it comes to the concept of innovation? What has happened over the last 10, 15 years that hopefully makes these companies interact and do innovation a little bit better.

Robyn Bolton: [00:01:40] There's actually that, as you can imagine, a tremendous amount of change that's happened over the past decades. So, when I started in innovation at P & G in the late nineties, innovation hadn't yet really become an industry. Entrepreneur was still synonymous with unemployed. I mean, it was just, it was before the first dot com bubble. Innovation was really just a company launching new products.

Now there's a whole industry around innovation. You have admittedly consultants like me. You have venture studios; you have incredible firms that do market research that do prototyping. You have corporate venture capital. There's this entire industry and ecosystem that has been built up to support companies who want to innovate.

The other thing is innovation has just become part of the corporate language. Right. I don't think you can tune into an analyst call. I don't think you can read an annual report without seeing, or hearing innovation over and over. So, it's just become part of the language and the lexicon of business. And what executives think about. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:02:51] Do you think a lot of that is due to the part that the world itself is changing so much and disruption is happening at a faster pace? And then therefore companies have to adapt to this, or is there something? 

Robyn Bolton: [00:03:04] I think it's very much that the world is changing at a faster pace. It is easier to start a company than it's ever been before. So, you're just seeing a lot more traction amongst startups. And you're seeing disruption as Clay Christiansen, coined the phrase. It’s happening more and more.

It used to be that it took decades and generations for disruption to happen. Now you just think about the last 10 years. And all of the industries that we've seen disrupted. So it's become less of, I would say this nice thing to do, and more of a business imperative. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:03:39] One of the things that I'm seeing out there is even though it's becoming much more part of the lexicon and people are thinking about it and trying to do some things around it, it doesn't seem to be actually impacting corporations. There's still a lot of failure when it comes to innovation. Can you talk a little bit about why companies are still having struggles around innovation? 

Robyn Bolton: [00:04:00] That's actually the question that has plagued me, and I think a lot of folks who work in innovation. Innovation has been around, been talked about being worked on for decades, but nothing's really changed when it comes to that success rate. And why is that? 

It's a lot of things. Companies got big by doing the same thing over and over and doing it better and better. And innovation is the opposite of that. It's doing something you probably never done. And making mistakes and learning from them. So, it's just the complete opposite of what a company is.

I think there's also this very human element of companies are filled with human beings. And as human beings, we respond to incentives. And we respond to the things that benefit us. So just any rational human being in their role within a company is going to say, okay, what do I get paid to do? What do I get a bonus for?

Honestly, the tenure enrolls has so reduced it. I think it's now like two years. That why would I spend time and resources and political capital on something that if it works, it will come to fruition maybe in five years when I'm long gone. Versus spending all of those resources and political capital on something that will most likely yield results in six months, when I'll get the rewards for it. So, there's just all of these human elements that are a challenge. 

Brian Ardinger: [00:05:35] I'm curious to hear your insights into what's changed over the last 18 months. COVID radically accelerated virtually everything, and probably you and I have been talking about disruption in that for a long time. 

And now it seems when you go into a boardroom, the executives, get it more than a theory, but they actually understand like, oh yeah, my entire business may have to change overnight. How has that affected people's take on innovation. And what have you seen over the last, maybe 18 months? 

Robyn Bolton: [00:06:03] I've really seen this just enlightenment and this opening up to the realities of innovation, because what makes innovation so hard is it requires change and change is uncomfortable and change is uncertain.

Well, COVID required to change literally overnight for a lot of companies. And suddenly leaders had an experience of change. And they experienced the learning process and they experienced all of these things that go along with innovation, and they realized they could do it. And that it wasn't as scary as they thought and that it was okay to make mistakes and then learn from them.

And so, all of these things that you experience when you're doing innovation that seem very scary and that you want to avoid, they suddenly did them and survived. And are thriving. In that way with every dark cloud has a silver lining. The silver lining of COVID is the companies now have a greater belief in their ability to innovate and to change and a greater openness to try new things.

Brian Ardinger: [00:07:14] Who's doing it well now. And have you seen a shift in how companies are em...