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  Then Camp watched a James Bond film, Casino Royale, and a scene in the movie triggered an idea. During the film Daniel Craig’s Bond is driving a silver Ford Mondeo in the Bahamas on the trail of his adversary when he glances down at his phone. What Bond saw on his phone grabbed Camp’s attention: a graphical icon of the Mondeo moving on a map toward his destination. The image stuck in his head and triggered the idea for an on-demand car service by which passengers could summon vehicles and track their arrival via a map on their phones. With the introduction of the iPhone this seemed like a realistic possibility. Camp thought the best way to start would be to purchase five Mercedes 550 coupes at roughly $100,000 each and share the cost of drivers and parking with friends who seemed willing to invest. Camp even registered the name UberCab because he loved the name “Uber” as referencing “great things.”

  Then, in December 2008, Camp traveled to Paris with McCloskey to attend the LeWeb conference on technology and innovation. His friend and fellow entrepreneur Travis Kalanick had arranged for a lavish apartment that Kalanick had found on the website VRBO. Kalanick had just sold his startup, Red Swoosh (a video-streaming service), to Akamai and was now free to consider other startup options. Although Camp had already discussed the car-service idea with Kalanick, spending the week together gave them the opportunity to discuss the idea in depth. But Kalanick had his own startup idea: “a company that would operate a global network of luxurious lodgings, identically furnished and separated into different classes, which could be leased via the internet.” He called this business idea Pad Pass. “It was sort of a cross between a home experience and a hotel experience,” says Kalanick. “I was trying to bring those two together.” As Camp recalls, “Travis had hacked out a whole Airbnb-like system that we were considering starting.”2

  The two discussed and debated both ideas during the week in Paris, and gradually the conversation focused more on Uber than Pad Pass (perhaps in part because of a bad taxi experience and because, as Kalanick later commented, “As everyone knows, it’s hard to get a cab in Paris”). Camp was convinced that the right way to start the business was to buy the five Mercedes. But Kalanick strongly disagreed. He argued that it would be a big mistake to own the cars and would be more efficient to just distribute a mobile app to drivers and riders. One evening at a restaurant in Paris the debate raged on as Camp and Kalanick spent the entire meal scrawling their estimates for things such as fixed costs and maximum vehicle utility rates on the paper tablecloth.

  On a separate night Camp, McCloskey, and Kalanick went out for a late dinner and drinks. After a few drinks, the semi-intoxicated friends hailed a cab at around 2 a.m. During the ride home the three friends were apparently speaking too loudly, because halfway through their ride the driver cursed them in French and threatened to kick them out of the car if they didn’t quiet down and if McCloskey didn’t move her feet (McCloskey was sitting in the middle of the backseat and, at five feet ten inches tall, she’d had to prop her high heels on the cushion between the two front seats). Kalanick was furious, and the experience was a catalyst for moving forward with Uber. “It definitely lit a fire,” McCloskey says. “When you are put in a situation where you feel like there’s an injustice, that pisses Travis off more than anything. He couldn’t get over it.”3

  When Camp and Kalanick returned to San Francisco they were ready to launch Uber—but not as Camp had originally conceived. Kalanick convinced Camp that Uber shouldn’t purchase the town cars and should only be an app to connect drivers and riders. Kalanick later said: “Garrett brought the classy, and I brought the efficiency. We don’t own cars, and we don’t hire drivers. We work with companies and individuals who do that. It’s very straightforward. I want to push a button and get a ride. That’s what it’s about.”4

  What Idea Networkers Do

  Camp’s experience generating the ideas behind Uber’s business model through conversations with friends, advisors, and even strangers illustrates how “idea networkers” ignite, develop, and refine new ideas. As Mark Zuckerberg once said, “Ideas typically do not just come to you. They happen because you’ve been talking about something and talking to a lot of people about it for a long period of time.”5 Some of you may be thinking: “I’m a good networker. But I’m not particularly innovative.” That may well be true. But it’s probably because you are like most successful executives, who are what we call resource networkers, rather than idea networkers. Most executives network to sell themselves, to sell their companies, or to build relationships with people who possess desired resources. In contrast, innovators are less likely to network for resources or career progression; rather, they actively tap into new ideas and insights by talking with people who have diverse ideas and perspectives. (See figure 5-1.) Our research on innovators revealed that startup entrepreneurs and corporate entrepreneurs are slightly better at idea networking than product innovators are, and quite a bit better than process innovators and noninnovators. If you want to launch an innovative new venture, networking is a critical skill, not only for generating new ideas but also for mobilizing the resources to launch new ventures. Overall, innovators score at around the seventy-first percentile, whereas noninnovators score around the forty-seventh percentile. (See figure 5-2.)

  FIGURE 5-1

  Networking differences between discovery- and delivery-driven executives

  FIGURE 5-2

  Comparison of idea networking skills for different types of innovators and noninnovators

  The basic principle of idea networking—as opposed to resource networking—is to build a bridge into a different area of knowledge by interacting with someone with whom you, or people within your primary social networks, typically do not interact. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, told us that he looks for insights in unexpected directions and from people who aren’t experts (as well as from experts). “I value ideas from unusual places,” he said. “The cliché would be, rather than talking to the CEO, I would want to talk to someone in the mailroom, something like that. I really look for people that have diverse backgrounds, diverse ways of thinking about things. What I try to do is just be exposed to some different styles of thinking. And I get input from these different directions just in a very open-ended way, not in a directed way.”

  To this end, Omidyar and others like him make a conscious effort to meet people with different educational backgrounds; who hail from different countries, industries, and business functions; and who are of different ages, ethnic backgrounds, and so forth. For example, Marc Benioff (Salesforce) told us about an interesting conversation he had with the State Oracle of Tibet, the official medium who, Benioff said, “was appointed by the Dalai Lama and is basically in charge of innovation for the Tibetan government.” Few of Benioff’s associates in the software industry have had the opportunity to get a different perspective from the State Oracle of Tibet. Innovators intuitively seem to understand that new ideas are often triggered through conversations with individuals who live in a different network of contacts. (For more on getting ideas and resources through weak-tie connections, see chapter 3 of Innovation Capital: How to Compete—and Win—Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders by Jeff Dyer, Nathan Furr, and Curtis Lefrandt.)

  University of Chicago sociologist Ron Burt has referred to this type of networking as bridging a “structural hole” or “gap” between different social networks. Burt studied 673 managers in a large US electronics firm and found that those managers who had broader networks of contacts—contacts who were not connected to other managers in the organization—were consistently rated as generating more highly valued ideas.6 “People with connections across structural holes [gaps in social networks] have early access to diverse, often contradictory, information and interpretations, which gives them a competitive advantage in seeing and developing good ideas,” writes Burt. “People connected to groups beyond their own can expect to find themselves delivering valuable ideas, seeming to be gifted with creativity. This is not creativity born of genius; it i
s creativity as an import-export business. An idea mundane in one group can be a valuable insight in another.” Burt also found that these “highly valued ideas” pay big dividends: managers with broad networks received more positive performance evaluations, had significantly higher salaries, and received more frequent promotions.

  To illustrate how building bridges into different social networks can generate innovative new ideas, consider how Joe Morton, an entrepreneur in the health and nutrition industry, got a billion-dollar idea during a trip to Malaysia. (See figure 5-3.)

  FIGURE 5-3

  Bridging gaps in social networks to get new ideas

  The figure shows Morton’s direct connections to numerous individuals within the health and nutrition industry (depicted by line connections to circles). Morton also spent almost a year living in Malaysia, where he learned about health and nutrition products Malaysians use from folks like Mahathir. (Mahathir represents many people Morton spoke with.) “I had a number of Malaysians tell me about these two local fruits—durian, the king of fruit, which supposedly heated the body up, and mangosteen, the queen of fruit, which cooled the body down and brought it into balance,” Morton told us. “I thought durian smelled horrible, even though Southeast Asians love it. But the mangosteen was delicious. Locals said the husk offered numerous health benefits, including the ability to boost energy, reduce inflammations, and settle an upset stomach.”

  Even though Morton had significant experience in the health and nutrition industry, he was not aware of any products in the field using either durian or mangosteen. So he contacted his brother David, who was getting his PhD at the University of Utah medical school, to see if any scientific research had examined health benefits associated with durian or mangosteen. David searched for medical-industry research studies about the fruits’ health benefits.

  Through David, Morton learned that while there were no medical studies on durian, there were numerous studies that indicated health benefits associated with xanthones, polyphenolic compounds found in abundance in mangosteen. These benefits included anti-inflammatory properties, as Mahathir and other Malaysians had suggested. Morton then used this information and his network of contacts in the health and nutrition industry (including cofounders Aaron Garrity and another brother, Gordon Morton) to found XanGo (pronounced “Zango”) in 2002, a company that sold XanGo (mangosteen) juice. With a unique new product and an innovative network marketing approach, it took XanGo only six years to become a $1 billion company. (It was acquired by Zija International in 2017.)

  Morton would never have come up with the idea for mangosteen juice if he hadn’t talked to Mahathir and other locals in Malaysia. Morton bridged a gap between two networks: his health and nutrition network of contacts in the United States and a network of locals in Malaysia who had knowledge of homeopathic herbs and fruits used there. The result: a very successful new product idea.

  Like Morton, many innovators claim that by visiting, or living in, a foreign country, they spawned a new idea by talking to a local. When we are in an environment that is very different from our own (different country, company, industry, ethnic group, and so on), we are more likely to interact with people who are in different social networks. Being in a new environment allows us to ask dumb questions about how and why things work.

  This type of networking often produces serendipity. In roughly half the cases we studied where new ideas came through networking, the lucky entrepreneur essentially stumbled onto the idea. But the “stumble” happened because the entrepreneur was looking for, and open to, ideas that would solve a problem. We saw this happen with Kurt Workman, cofounder of Owlet, a company that has created a sock “health tracker” that monitors a baby’s breathing and heart rate and alerts parents if there is a problem. Workman, who was in college getting an engineering degree, got the idea after visiting with his friend Tanner Hodges, who was working as a nurse at the University of Utah hospital. Hodges described a pain he was experiencing as a nurse: patients, especially disoriented ones, would frequently pull the pulse oximeter cord (which monitored breathing) off their finger, thereby causing the alarm to sound. Hodges wanted to make a wireless pulse oximeter ear clip so that disoriented patients wouldn’t constantly pull the cord off their finger. Workman listened to the idea, but the potential of the idea didn’t really sink in until a few months later when Workman and his wife, Shea, met with a cardiologist to discuss the implications of getting pregnant. Shea had a congenital heart defect and had quit breathing once as a baby and had needed to be rushed to the hospital. Workman’s unborn baby was at risk for the same defect. Moreover, Workman’s cousin had died of SIDS when he was twelve months old. “I remember driving home from the doctor’s office and thinking how would I know if something was wrong with my baby,” recalls Workman. “I remembered the idea that Tanner had told me about and I thought, ‘Oh, that could be a cool technology to be able to monitor a baby at home.’” So Workman called up Hodges and told him he thought the right application for wireless pulse oximetry was a home-monitoring device for babies. So they developed Owlet, a snuggly baby sock monitor that alerts parents if their baby stops breathing or suffers a spike or drop in heart rate. The company is creating peace of mind for new parents and has been identified in a Forbes article as one of the next “billion dollar startups,” with revenues projected to approach $100 million in 2019.7

  We saw many innovators like Kurt Workman, Joe Morton, and Garrett Camp who take advantage of every opportunity to talk to people to see what they themselves can learn. This habit produces the novel idea now and again through serendipity. But effective idea networkers also plan to find new ideas by regularly tapping outside experts for ideas, by attending networking events, and by building a personal network of creative confidants.

  Tap Outside Experts

  We found that purposeful networking was often effective when innovators attempted to reach out to experts in a different field of knowledge. To illustrate, consider the case of Norton, Massachusetts–based CPS Technologies, one of the more innovative companies in the advanced-materials industry. CPS has developed highly advanced and innovative ceramic composites, a class of materials superior to conventional ones in a number of ways, including improved thermal conductivity, increased stiffness, and lighter weight. Kent Bowen, the recently retired founding scientist at CPS, made networking a priority when he hung the following credo in every office of his startup:

  The insights required to solve many of our most challenging problems come from outside our industry and scientific field. We must aggressively and proudly incorporate into our work findings and advances which were not invented here.

  One of Bowen’s favorite questions when facing a technical challenge was, “Who else has faced or solved a problem like this before?” He actively looked for people in other fields and disciplines to understand what they did and what they knew that might have been relevant to his company’s issues. As a result, scientists from CPS have solved numerous complex problems by talking with people in other fields.

  For example, CPS’s ceramic composites are made from uniform, submicron materials (aluminum oxide and silicon carbide) that are combined in slurries (an example of a slurry is a mixture like water and cement that eventually makes concrete). Dispersing these submicron materials in a uniform way is critical to making strong, defect-free ceramic products, but the chemistry for doing this had vexed some of the world’s best colloid scientists. After Bowen discovered that photographic-film manufacturers dispersed huge volumes of microscopic silver halide particles in very uniform films, CPS contacted a senior polymer chemist from Polaroid, the photographic-film manufacturer. The chemist brought new knowledge that helped CPS solve the problem within a few weeks, thereby making the composite much stronger.

  The CPS team solved another serious quality problem by talking to sperm-freezing specialists. CPS scientists observed that as their ceramic slurries were injected into molds and began freezing, ice crystals formed. These ice crystals
were a serious problem, because cracks in the composites would originate in the crystals, like cracks in concrete. In a scientific journal report, a CPS engineer discovered that biologists who do artificial inseminations routinely faced the same problem. Experts in sperm-freezing technology knew how to prevent ice-crystal growth in cells during freezing. So CPS contacted them, learned their technique, and incorporated it into CPS’s manufacturing process. Collectively, these innovations were a stunning success, allowing CPS to produce some of the strongest and lightest ceramic composites ever made. Bowen’s practice of actively seeking out people in other industries and disciplines was critical to generating innovative ideas.

  Despite all the positives of networking with experts in other fields, Intuit’s Scott Cook cautions that sometimes talking to experts isn’t the best way to generate innovations. “Some problems and new business ideas are such a paradigm shift that talking to people reinforces the current paradigm,” cautions Cook. “Some paradigm shifts are, I find, better initiated by watching customers or watching things happen in the marketplace as opposed to talking to experts.” The point is that while getting new ideas and perspectives from experts can lead to innovative ideas, experts are also indoctrinated with a particular perspective that may be incorrect. So remember to ask counterintuitive questions that challenge the so-called experts. Then listen carefully, with a healthy dose of skepticism.

  Attend Idea-Networking Events

  In chapter 1, we noted that Frans Johansson has described cross-discipline connections as the Medici effect, referring to the explosion of creativity during the Italian Renaissance. Richard Saul Wurman, the retired founder of the Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conferences, played the same role as a modern-day Medici, creating a forum where experts in various fields can share cutting-edge ideas. In 1984, Wurman noticed the convergence of technology, entertainment, and design, and created an idea accelerator, where smart people from diverse backgrounds talked about the new projects they were working on. At the annual conference, the speakers and the audience members engage in a collision of ideas to create even better ones. TED conferences have evolved into a provocative forum for generating powerful new ideas, as smart individuals with diverse backgrounds connect in a common mind-set to change the world. (As Bill Gates reportedly said, “The combined IQ of the attendees is incredible.”)