TEL 242: “Not Invented Here” with Ramon Vullings

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Wade Danielson

A summary of things you should know about Not Invented Here according to Ramon Vullings

Introduction (0:33)

My name is Ramon Vullings. I am a Dutch guy living in Belgium. I love to travel and I have a background in innovation consulting for about 15 years. About 10 years ago, I decided to start my own company more on the creative side of innovation and that has finally led me to a team of 8 people. We are a team of boutique consulting and we focus on nice, elegant combination for innovation.

The Book’s Unique Quality (02:46)

We decided to take a very visual approach. We provide a lot of pictures, a lot of funny pictures, in which we illustrate the power of crossing the industry border. We also decided to keep it a very light book with a very simple 3 step model. The book provides a lot of examples and concrete tools, which are unique things that people can really use in their daily business.

The Best Way To Engage (3:29)

The Reader’s Takeaway (12:33)

It would be don’t copy, paste. Copy, adapt, paste. We always see people trying to copy a model but they forget to really fine tune it to make it matching and fitting for their specific area.

A Deep Dive Into The Book (03:54)

In Not Invented Here, we provide the readers with cool tools that are great to jump start your innovation efforts. We outline the concept of cross industry innovation, which is a clever way to jump start you innovation efforts by drawing analogies and transferring approaches between context. This is jumping beyond the borders of your own industries, your sector, your area, your domain, your business and you can draw these analogies on various levels. You can do it on your primary (products and services), your secondary level on processes, on strategies, on business models, on culture, and even on leadership. The cross industry innovations driver is that organizations need to go from best practices thinking to next practice thinking. A lot of disruption in many sectors that we see comes from totally unexpected areas. So a complication in the future actually comes from a different sector and that is what we outline in the book is that we open up the minds of the reader to see the potential in next practice thinking. To do that we have a few steps that we take you through in the book and the main model for cross industry innovation is: concept combine create. Three steps, three phases.

First, the concept phase, or the art of questioning is where we help people to ask more provocative and more beautiful questions. This is also the chapter where we extend peoples knowledge network beyond the borders of their area and to see that someone else has solved your problem already.

The second phase is combine. How do you combine different areas? The key here is to learn the right tactics and copy paste is not the right tactic. It should be copy, adapt, paste. So you should modify or integrate or change an element so that you can apply that to your business. We provide various cases of that and show that not only can you learn from different companies but you can also learn from nature, from the arts, from music, and from all kinds of even maybe almost weird feeling areas. In the combine phase we focus first on inspiring industries of smart sectors, that is on the industry level, and then we zoom on company level asking, “what would X do?” (X being other businesses). Finally, we focus on some common business challenges, such as attracting new customers or how do other successful businesses organize their supply chain.

The final phase is the create. Here you need to see that it is not the survival of the fittest but it is survival of the most fitting. This means that the way you adopt your solutions, taking them from one area to another is crucial to be able to fit it with your area. With that knowledge you can decide to remix your own business or to remix someone else’s business.

The book actually helps you to increase your match sensitivity. So the “where should I start?” Cross industry innovations lies between the free brainstorming on one side and totally structured methods on the other side. Cross industry innovation tries to fall right in the middle of these.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 03:54

Notable Quotes From The Book (13:18)

“Don’t copy paste but copy, adapt, paste.” -Ramon Vullings

The Credibility/Inspiration Of The Author (01:45)

In our creative consulting work we combine a lot of ideas between different sectors and we have been doing that for years. Me and my colleague decided that it was time to write a book about what we were doing, which is introducing concepts from totally different sectors into another sector.

Other Books Recommended By The Author (14:29)

Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

More Information About This Book and The Author (15:33)

Buy on Amazon today
His Website: www.crossindustryinnovation.com/
Add him to Twitter:https://twitter.com/RamonVullings

More Information About This Episode

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Wade Danielson

Wade is a 4-time serial entrepreneur and is the Founder/Host of The Entrepreneurs Library. With a long time passion for reading books, Wade created an online resource and podcast for entrepreneurs who love to read personal and business development books. His long-term goal in life is to start an entrepreneurial home schooling program for children of business-minded families.

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