This episode of #TBNE features a long-time friend of the show and 2x guest Matt Hooper as we get tactical on The Millennial Era and how open innovation inspires leadership. As we are both millennials we discuss how things changed from our perspective and how the millennial generation paved way for what is to come. This is part 1 of a 3 part series as we got together to cover some ground! Check out the previous episodes with Matt Hooper to hear his entrepreneurial background and journey. Episode 53 // Episode 54 Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
This episode of #TBNE features a long-time friend of the show and 2x guest Matt Hooper as we get tactical on The Millennial Era and how open innovation inspires leadership.
As we are both millennials we discuss how things changed from our perspective and how the millennial generation paved way for what is to come. This is part 1 of a 3 part series as we got together to cover some ground!
Check out the previous episodes with Matt Hooper to hear his entrepreneurial background and journey. Episode 53 // Episode 54
Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.
Connect with Matt Hooper:
Connect with Rob:
Show Produced by: Niranjan Deshpande (Nick), Broken Frames Studio, www.brokenframesstudio.com
Creative Director: Maxim Sokolov, www.maximsokolov.com
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EPISODE 74 : MATT HOOPER
INTRO
00:00:07:15 - 00:00:27:24
Rob Napoli
We are back again for another episode of The Bear Necessities. But today it's a collaboration day. So we're doing a bare necessities, 2030 leadership newsletter, collaboration. We're bringing it back, my friend, and one of the coolest innovative thinkers that I know, Matt Hooper. Matt, how are we doing, my friend?
00:00:28:23 - 00:00:36:09
Matt Hooper
We're doing well. Rob Thank you for having me. Thank you for the collaboration. And yeah, I'm excited to put this out in the pod and in our LinkedIn newsletter.
MAIN VIDEO
00:00:39:06 - 00:00:59:10
Matt Hooper
Dear listener, dear viewer, we were discussing just before we got on here was it Rob and I both woke up excited. I think we're kindly telling each other we were excited for this conversation. But we're not really sure if we were just excited that it was Friday or if we were going to be talking to each other. That was that was the big conversation that was happening off off camera, off mic
00:01:00:10 - 00:01:20:06
Rob Napoli
I mean, for me, it's always like I love Fridays just in general, but especially Fridays when I sit down and record some pod episodes and talk about really cool shit. Like, to me, like, that gets me excited. And that was the reason, you know, usually when you wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, it's because you're in a panic because you're, like, nervous and anxiety.
00:01:20:07 - 00:01:24:03
Matt Hooper
Right? Right. It's an anxiety. Wake up. It's not like let's let's go get them.
00:01:24:03 - 00:01:53:09
Rob Napoli
Which is what surprised me, because the 35, I woke up like a seven year old at Christmas time for today I know that that's not how I wake up every Friday, so I'm guessing it's a combination of the two. But yeah, we're excited and, you know, we've been wanting to get this collaboration going for a while. And I think the best thing to do is take a minute and explain what the 2030 newsletter, leadership newsletter is, is about and what your impact that you wanted to create by launching it.
00:01:54:18 - 00:02:34:14
Matt Hooper
Sure. So I spend my time as the managing director of Idonea U.S. which is the American based arm of the Danish management consulting firm. And I didn't here was founded honor on principles and ideas in a book called Dreams and Details, written by Jim Snavely and Michael Tolley, who are chairman and CEO respectively. And Dreams and Details literally puts forward a leadership methodology of leadership sort of framework blueprint for and this is what I fell in love with it for.
00:02:34:14 - 00:02:58:01
Matt Hooper
Beyond that, it's practical. And we'll get to in a minute for a number of different kinds of leaders. Right. But but very specifically, I think the thing that differentiates so much of the work I've been able to do as a practitioner of dreams and details and so much of the work that Idonea has done as a firm, especially up till now in Denmark, is helping leaders reinvent their institutions from a position of strength.
00:02:58:01 - 00:03:23:06
Matt Hooper
So it's for folks in now, again, not exclusively, but really began life as something that helped senior leaders in senior executives at some of the world's largest businesses and institutions reinvent their entire firm and take real chances that they otherwise might not have in order to realize an ambitious dream. And then, of course, what are the crucial details necessary to realize that dream?
00:03:23:06 - 00:03:45:06
Matt Hooper
Right. That's that's why the methodologies called dreams and details. And again, I mentioned that I found this to be very practical. Yeah, but there's a lot of which which is rare in a newsroom leadership that I was employing in my own life before I worked at the firm and helped build the firm here in the U.S. But and I have a corporate innovation background to an extent, which we'll talk about in a minute.
00:03:45:06 - 00:04:02:07
Matt Hooper
And I know that's a big part of what we want to talk about today. But the reason there's a roundabout way of saying the reason why I did the newsletter was there are a lot of different sorts of leaders and there are a lot of different sorts of challenges. And there's an ascendant generation of leaders. I am a millennial smack dab in the middle of that generation.
00:04:02:07 - 00:04:22:17
Matt Hooper
I were working with a lot of Gen Z folks in the workplace. Now I know that's something you've written about a lot. And so where do these ascendant leaders go? How do they reinvent their institutions, their organizations? What does the future of work look like? Post-Pandemic. These are questions that I thought needed, if not answers, then then sort of discourse built around them.
00:04:23:01 - 00:04:43:00
Matt Hooper
And that's what the newsletter has been. It is biweekly. I've sort of taken the last five weeks or so off the summertime, and then August is a time when I'm using to to rest and refresh. But we'll be back in September with with more regular content. And this also came out of my, you know, my last role where I had my own media business.
00:04:43:00 - 00:05:02:07
Matt Hooper
So I know the importance of conversations where they're oral or visual. And and that's why I don't think it's why we we do the newsletter, but it certainly was the reason it began. Now we do the newsletter because I get to learn a lot from brilliant leaders. I mean, that's that's the fun I get to have now.
00:05:02:12 - 00:05:27:02
Rob Napoli
Yeah. I mean, content based networking, it's all value added and the fact that you get to develop those. But I think you made a point in that and this is a kind of transition as because I know that this is a topic that, you know, you're leading the show on this one. But you said that part of the reason you wanted it is that there's a lot of things that are happening with future of work and as seniors leaders and, you know, a lot of changes happening in the workplace and it's really easy.
00:05:27:02 - 00:05:51:24
Rob Napoli
We see it where it's like sometimes people don't know how to create their second, third or fourth act of life and stay within the times. And we're actually seeing it on a global scale when people aren't forward thinking and making decisions based on the path it passed, it hurts everything. And you also said looking for answers. But then you said actually not looking for answers.
00:05:51:24 - 00:06:07:17
Rob Napoli
But we need to start discourse because I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. And I think too much nowadays getting to a topic of innovation, we think like what is innovation? And we get into our topic. Just like with leadership, we're always looking for the right fucking answer, but the right answer never exists.
00:06:08:10 - 00:06:09:23
Matt Hooper
Right. Right. Well, yeah.
00:06:10:05 - 00:06:25:14
Rob Napoli
That we need to have conversations. Conversations leads to innovation. Innovation then becomes out of ideas, right? Conversations lead to ideas, ideas, innovation. And so if we don't start conversations and have really cool and deep conversations, what does innovation even mean?
00:06:25:14 - 00:06:55:04
Matt Hooper
And right. And I think sorry, I just I didn't mean to jump in there, but I got excited about that because I think that so, yes, it's we don't have answers. We want to create the conversation. We want to create the discourse. But also, I think, again, what I loved in the dreams and details methodology, what I still love what, what, what we practice is that innovation comes out of leadership that that, you know, the right the right way of thinking about how to lead a team or and knowing that good leadership is good followership.
00:06:55:14 - 00:07:26:13
Matt Hooper
Only from there can you start to, as you said, implement the ideas you have and realize in reinvention. Realize in innovation realize. We could call the dynamic change of season. Right. It's a way that you can that you can actually prepare for and excel in a change of season, which means a market shift, which means a social cultural shift, which means, as we're discussing the future of work, that suddenly overnight everybody's working from home and not everyone's going back to the office, or at least in the information economy.
00:07:26:18 - 00:07:52:19
Matt Hooper
Two and a half years later. There's a lot to unpack in all of this. I mean, I think that the real trouble with some of these conversations, not ours, but maybe ours, is that you start in like buzzwords land. Yeah. And we're preaching to a certain section of an already converted audience. Again, as I mentioned, folks who work in the information economy, so largely white collar jobs, folks who are thinking about, you know, like how to reinvent their firm because they're in a position of senior leadership.
00:07:52:19 - 00:08:23:05
Matt Hooper
Right. They're not necessarily early in their career and folks who work in and around innovation because they want to be maybe in an exciting business unit, not necessarily because they know how hard it actually is. And I think that the the big lessons I've learned this year in terms of when I bring this methodology out to prospective clients or when I talk about it with fellow ecosystem leaders like yourself, the big thing I learned is that these lessons are applicable to, as we were mentioning a moment ago, anybody at any stage in their career, they are different.
00:08:23:09 - 00:08:45:21
Matt Hooper
And this idea that leadership can lead to innovation is maybe not as popular as I had assumed it would be. Yeah, like I do at the start of the study, early stage, I think that I think that when a lot of folks think about innovation and conversations I have, and this is anecdotal, they're thinking about ways of working with startups, exciting, which is great, which I want to talk about, which I believe in their thinking about New tech products.
00:08:45:21 - 00:09:07:24
Matt Hooper
And a lot of times you're thinking about, am I making money in my saving money? I don't know. They're thinking about it as a as a strategy tied to taking a brief position. Taking a leadership position. Yeah. I don't know how popular that idea is. I think leadership, when it's most dismissed, maybe is the right word for the worst.
00:09:09:18 - 00:09:42:21
Matt Hooper
And it's unfortunate. I think it's considered something that you can like, you know, it's like the realm of motivational speakers that we really believe and have pushed forward into the business discourse is that leadership is the jumping off point for reinvention, for innovation, as we were saying. And that is so fundamental. And I had to sort of check my ego check, you know, sort of re reacquaint myself with, uh, with why I got into the business world in the first place.
00:09:43:09 - 00:09:52:17
Matt Hooper
Ask myself what I thought was really important in my career. And, and yes, it is to be innovative, but I don't think that innovation is something that we can separate from.
00:09:54:12 - 00:09:57:02
Matt Hooper
From being a leader and from and from trusting the right leaders do.
00:09:57:05 - 00:10:27:23
Rob Napoli
I mean, that's, I mean that's really interesting because we think of I think it's really interesting of issues interesting twice in a row. But this concept of innovation and leadership tying together and how does that how growth in leadership creates innovation. And I think that while that inherently seems to be linked, so we don't actually discuss that that much because we think, oh, innovative ideas come from conversations from new market, new products, new things.
00:10:28:23 - 00:10:51:02
Rob Napoli
But at the core, it comes from being a good leader and having a team or a person at an organization willing to take a stand and do something bold and go in a direction that by nature, when you innovate, a lot of people will think you're crazy at first because you're kind of starting something new or you're going for a really big thing that most other people don't see.
00:10:51:02 - 00:11:14:00
Rob Napoli
And so that takes it really takes a really strong leader to go be able to execute on that through all the potential negative pushback, the obstacles, right. Yeah. We think there's a book called The Obstacle is the way I lean into that discomfort, because on the other side of that is where you're really going to learn. And it's really easy for us to just say, well, let's, let's stick to the tried and true methodology.
00:11:14:17 - 00:11:19:06
Rob Napoli
And I don't think that that works anymore. We can't just say, Well, that worked in the past in our future because.
00:11:19:07 - 00:11:41:01
Matt Hooper
That will totally and the definition of insanity is, is and I'm paraphrasing here to do the same thing a million times and expect a different result. Right? Expect a different outcome. So so I do think that the I do think that the ability to to react to a dynamic change of season and to be able to reinvent yourself while market forces are moving well, the world is changing.
00:11:41:01 - 00:12:02:10
Matt Hooper
I mean, you know, we look at the last couple of years in world history and beyond a pandemic, a contentious election here in the United States, a war in Ukraine like business leaders have to respond to these issues they have to respond to the issues in the market? They have to respond to the issues among their employees.
00:12:02:10 - 00:12:20:16
Matt Hooper
And I think I think by and large, you're seeing like the best and bravest leaders respond. Well, like I think that that I but so it's interesting people are at the center of the business conversation again which I also like and respect I will say and maybe this is a good transition to a topic near and dear to my heart, which is open innovation, right?
00:12:20:16 - 00:12:41:19
Matt Hooper
If we're seeing that leadership inspires innovation and what is open innovation and open innovation? You know, more broadly, because I had a role where open innovation was actually in my job title once upon a time. But the open innovation very broadly is looking outside of the silos within your institution for inspiration, for help, and for new business development.
00:12:41:19 - 00:13:01:22
Matt Hooper
Right. So it's large corporates or government offices looking to early stage companies, early stage firms for support, whether you want to be their customer, whether you want to invest in them, or do you want to collaborate with you, want to form a joint venture. And so on. So it's really your breaking out of your box to seek help elsewhere, to look with, to look into.
00:13:02:05 - 00:13:25:18
Matt Hooper
We all call an ecosystem for for, for support, for innovation help, essentially. And what's interesting about that is on either side of that table, whether you're a corporate innovator or you're a founder, I really don't know how in my experience. Right. I don't know how important leadership was in my own training. Like when you're a founder, you're like, I got to get this product out.
00:13:25:18 - 00:13:48:08
Matt Hooper
And I got to raise money, right? Those are the and and because we live in a culture where we reward wealth and status and all these other things, you know, like the more money you raise, the more users you have and so on. That's what's impressive. Not necessarily. Does your team love you? Or does your board love you or.
00:13:48:17 - 00:14:23:11
Matt Hooper
I don't say love, you know what I mean? But like, are you setting the tone? It's not actually necessarily encouraged and you know, see Startup CEO School on day one. I'm not saying it's discouraged, but it's just not something that is as paramount in the in the training of an early stage CEO and the open innovator side that the corporate innovator, the one practicing trying to open up the innovation and looking at the startups more frequently, they're not in a cynical organization.
00:14:23:11 - 00:14:35:08
Matt Hooper
What I've seen, they're trying to keep their job. They're trying to manage up. They're deeply afraid of taking a risk. They don't know why they're incentivized to take that risk. And so invariably they do not.
00:14:36:07 - 00:14:53:11
Matt Hooper
And so you end up having a lot of what I call and what I'm working on a project about innovation theater, where sort of performative innovation, which is ridiculous because ultimately you have an open innovation team that wants to work with a startup and cares. You have a startup team that needs the revenue that working with a corporate would bring you.
00:14:53:23 - 00:15:13:02
Matt Hooper
And so to me, all of my, my startup years and my corporate years, like they keep coming in and around this, they keep meeting in this problem. Yeah. And I see leadership as a solution, the right methodology, the right language, right the right language to be shared. Yeah. Between the corporate leader and the startup leader, that's really important.
00:15:13:10 - 00:15:37:02
Matt Hooper
And I see that as a jumping off point for actually trying to solve the open innovation problem. And it wasn't until I met the folks at Idonea and it wasn't till I read dreams and details that I was even aware that a leadership methodology had been what I'd been missing. So you know, I just wanted to connect those dots, which is like, yes, of leadership kicks off innovation and open innovation, a very difficult kind of innovation, like literally can't work without leadership.
00:15:37:02 - 00:15:37:15
Matt Hooper
Yeah. No.
00:15:38:02 - 00:15:55:21
Rob Napoli
I mean, you know, a good friend of ours, Greg Larkin, talks about entrepreneurialism and what it means to be an entrepreneur and innovator in that narrative. You know, a lot of times is you got to you got to lean into the discomfort because you're working for a risk averse company. You have to handle the detractors and really get them on your side.
00:15:55:21 - 00:16:16:17
Rob Napoli
You have to be really good at pushing those boundaries. And, you know, he has his group punks in pinstripes. Right. The idea that you have to be a punk inside a very buttoned up organization to get change happen. And we did a great episode on that. So for others listening to the Bear Necessities or leadership, the 2030, I'll link that episode in the show notes.
00:16:16:17 - 00:16:17:16
Rob Napoli
You can take a look at it.
00:16:18:05 - 00:16:21:01
Matt Hooper
Yeah. And Greg Larkin was a guest on 2030 leadership, too.
00:16:21:10 - 00:16:23:11
Rob Napoli
So, you know, two weeks to go. You know.
00:16:23:17 - 00:16:28:05
Matt Hooper
He's he's a, you know, one day the three of us have to do our podcast. But we we.
00:16:28:08 - 00:16:32:14
Rob Napoli
Really had to book out like 4 hours for that, right, for the three lessons to get engaged.
00:16:32:16 - 00:16:57:09
Matt Hooper
But I want to say this about Greg, because beyond that, Greg is brilliant. Hi, Greg. If you're if you're watching or listening. But the here's what I think about entrepreneurship Not like what I think. It's not I'm not going to do a mic drop. First of all, I can't because the mic is right here. I am not holding it. But but but I think the revelation I ahead of an entrepreneur ship is it does take a lot of different it takes a lot of different kinds of folks, investors, different lots of ways of being a successful entrepreneur.
00:16:58:18 - 00:17:19:10
Matt Hooper
And Greg's, by the way, I've been a successful entrepreneur, coaches successful entrepreneur. The open innovation thing is different. It's like, how can an executive work with an entrepreneur? No one really trying necessarily to be an entrepreneur. Yeah, they're trying to be really good at their job and succeed at their job by working with an entrepreneur. It's a collaborative experience.
00:17:19:19 - 00:17:47:21
Matt Hooper
And so, you know, do I think that entrepreneurship is is good leadership the best entrepreneurs are also the best leaders. Sure I way I think their executive requires leadership but the again to go back to the specificity of open innovation it's a different kind of executive. Yeah, it's a different kind of relationship. And Greg, also, I think because he's kind of a provocateur author and I love that about him, will ask Will you name the best startup corporate collaborations?
00:17:47:21 - 00:18:23:21
Matt Hooper
Matt And we'll get together and he'll be like, Will you like can you name a company that's that's that's bottom line was substantially changed by an open innovation collaboration with a startup or scale up and I can and I have but but not necessarily in the way he's describing I think that there's some truth to that that open but but here's my counter counterargument in our new world a post-COVID world, a world as digitized as ever where the information industrial economy meet like you cannot depend on good ideas coming from the inside exclusively.
00:18:24:03 - 00:18:41:24
Matt Hooper
You can't. So you might have been able to get away with that for a while, but that's no longer the case. So I don't think opening, you know, the same way that we often joke like you don't call a company, an Internet company, it's just a company. Yeah. I don't think we'll be talking about open innovation as a business unit in the next 15 years.
00:18:41:24 - 00:18:44:05
Matt Hooper
I think it'll just be like a unit where the new. Ideas happened and I don't know what you called
00:18:44:05 - 00:18:45:11
Rob Napoli
00:18:45:12 - 00:18:54:21
Matt Hooper
All I don't know what happens, but it's a place where, you know, in most successful firms that that's where the startups go to work with executives. That's the safe place for it for for the day.
00:18:55:02 - 00:19:16:18
Rob Napoli
I hope that you're right in that because from my view and this is not negative to, you know, I have a lot of friends that work at larger organizations in the innovation departments. And as I learn more, I see it. But it's really hard to see because from my perspective, I look at people who have innovation in their title at these big corporates.
00:19:17:07 - 00:19:35:04
Rob Napoli
They barely had a cup of coffee ever working in a startup, and a lot of times they just want to get in this partnership mode of like looking and evaluating time. I've never been there, done that. And I think what's different that you bring to the table is you're trying to really you were always trying to tie those loops because you went through this struggle of being a broke entrepreneur and building.
00:19:35:13 - 00:19:36:06
Rob Napoli
And I think that's.
00:19:36:06 - 00:20:02:20
Matt Hooper
A really totally there's there's nothing like not having any money to to make you want to help founders when you recognize yourself in them. Right. Like that is a, you know, as a, as a friend of mine, I would say full stop. And that is exactly it. And, and that's really scary. Yeah. And I think a lot of executives either forget that or don't recognize the import of that.
00:20:02:20 - 00:20:23:07
Matt Hooper
P.O.C. Yeah, that, that, that. PILOT Yeah, that, you know, whatever the scope of the deal they want to do, like when that budget is either delayed or it gets tied up in procurement or it doesn't, you know, or like it or I don't know, or it gets messed around because another leader or another senior leader walked in and decide at the last minute that it didn't belong there.
00:20:23:07 - 00:20:32:05
Matt Hooper
Like accounting in a corporation, when you're when you're otherwise going to be spending that money on a startup, collaboration could really hurt that startup, I think.
00:20:32:06 - 00:20:47:03
Rob Napoli
Well, the reason I bring this point up of why it kind of bothers me and why I think this needs to happen. And I love the trend of where this is going. What you're saying is that if we actually look at the big corporates out there today and we look at leadership, none of the leadership that is currently in place was there when the company started.
00:20:47:13 - 00:21:10:17
Rob Napoli
So they've they've grown into a role into a company that already had money, already had process, already had stability and staff able to chug along and do their job. Now they're able to innovate within that, do really cool things, launching new products, all these things. But to that point, many leaders in larger organizations have never been in the place of this is the last $10,000 in my bank account.
00:21:10:23 - 00:21:16:17
Rob Napoli
If we don't do what we need to do in the next 60 days, I can't pay the five employees that I have and I have to lay everybody off.
00:21:17:09 - 00:21:29:24
Matt Hooper
I can't pay the five employees. I can't pay rent at this co-working space that many of you think is so cool, but it's actually kind of, you know, like, like it's where I actually work. It's not. It's not my sort of performance space.
00:21:30:15 - 00:22:00:22
Matt Hooper
You know, I think that I when I first heard the phrase innovation theater, it was from a founder at a co-working space that I was helping to manage. And we said a bunch of executives are going to come and visit at some point. He he he did great work with the firm and we had a particularly innovative firm in my experience in the corporation was a lot of folks were hungry to actually innovate, which is unique and, and something I'm very proud of all these years later, but especially I saw other, you know, when I got to see more the lay of the land and a lot of other corporate innovation folks.
00:22:01:14 - 00:22:20:05
Matt Hooper
The because you don't know what you don't know like I was in a smaller world where a lot of people I knew were smart and driven and really interested, and you realize how lucky sometimes you are to be on a certain team at a certain time. And the experience I had with this founder was, you know, I said a bunch of executives are going to come and take a look at and want to meet you there.
00:22:20:08 - 00:22:41:10
Matt Hooper
He was like, oh, like sort of an innovation petting zoo, innovation theater, you know. Yeah. Like, are they going to come and stare at us when we go to work? Like, how where would it be if I went up to their office and walked into their cubicles that were. Yes, maybe not as well. Not as exciting and didn't have access to, you know, a keg or coffee or foosball tables and whatever.
00:22:41:16 - 00:23:17:22
Matt Hooper
But is ultimately still a workplace. Yeah. And you know, I'm really interested in how this is going to change again during the sort of COVID and post-COVID era, where on the we're on the one hand, it's great that you can see anybody anytime you want on Zoom or teams or whatever. On the other hand, part of that excitement that I saw in executives was the chance to break out of their environment, was the chance to like again, to use dreams, details, language, was to jump into the change of season was to embrace the change of season, to smell the leaves falling and race toward it.
00:23:17:22 - 00:23:35:22
Matt Hooper
Yeah, that was exciting. And that came from a change of location and being in a startup environment and of fewer and fewer people are going into workplaces of any kind. Yeah. Will that seem cultural translation take place? Will people still feel as inspired by their surroundings? I truly don't know.
00:23:35:22 - 00:23:56:04
Rob Napoli
Yeah, well, I. It'll be interesting because we saw, you know, if you've seen we crashed, right, whenever. Adam I didn't. But I like it if come in, you know he had everybody set up and had people talking and people were laughing. And there is a little bit of theatrics to the vibe that he wanted people to see from the walk off the elevator into his office.
00:23:56:16 - 00:24:17:11
Rob Napoli
And I experienced that early in my career back in 2012, when Nationwide became a full agile shop. They did all open seating pods. They had all the the stand ups, the sticky notes, all the colors and tons of people would come to Des Moines to go check out. That was the first of its kind. Three floors were built out that way.
00:24:17:22 - 00:24:35:22
Rob Napoli
And I brought my executives to show them that as well, because I was meeting that large client and I just remembered, you know, then talking about that. And I never even thought about like innovation did I love this topic because it's like, holy shit. Like, I remember everyone was trying to do their job, but I also put out a little bit of face because I had people walking around and he wanted it to be a good.
00:24:36:03 - 00:24:43:07
Matt Hooper
It's a it's a performance and you know so we work is interesting. So I was the first entrepreneur in residence that we were collabs.
00:24:43:24 - 00:25:09:03
Matt Hooper
And this was after my time as a corporate innovator. But we were, we were in a complicated story for so many reasons. I actually didn't watch. We crashed. I probably should. But there's a there's a we were complicated because it created a world that people wanted to be like Disney or something, you know? I mean, like, there was like a sense that you could walk in and experience it.
00:25:09:03 - 00:25:33:23
Matt Hooper
And my manager, from the time when I was at my, I had an open innovation rule because we built a coworking space as part of our mandate came from real estate at one time in his career and similarly, like knew how to sell space. And I came from a world of, I mean, like I couldn't be less into space.
00:25:33:23 - 00:25:53:03
Matt Hooper
Like, I don't even know how to explain it. Like, I was like working at a coffee shops. All I knew was my laptop. This is a waste of money. What are we doing? And then maybe like five days into the role. Yeah, I realized how important it was that this space was there. And by the way, the space to this day exists on on 23rd Street in Manhattan.
00:25:53:03 - 00:26:20:08
Matt Hooper
And it's a meaningful thing in people's lives, meaningful and mine. I still work out of there frequently when I'm down in New York. And so there's anyway, the point of the story, I guess with we work was we were create a template for all manner of institutions like I'm sure that some of the folks at Nationwide got a got a whiff of this co-working phenomenon elsewhere in the country, happening in San Francisco, in New York and other places.
00:26:20:08 - 00:26:45:09
Matt Hooper
I remember when in London there was a big surge of interest because all of a sudden co-working was taking off. Adam Neumann, the founder and CEO of We Were, had a another co-working company in Brooklyn that I looked at for my first office, for my first business before we were existed. And then I my WeWork office before I worked with we work my first WeWork office was the first WeWork office at all at 154 GRANT Yeah, I had.
00:26:45:09 - 00:27:07:08
Matt Hooper
So, I mean, like I remember all of that and lived through it and it was interesting to see how that, that component, the sort of vaguely grungy, stay caffeinated, do what you love. Branding that we were created became the easiest thing for larger institutions to see.
00:27:07:23 - 00:27:32:21
Matt Hooper
So building accelerators can be very difficult. Building incubators is, by design, a long term incubation process. Meeting with startups and taking the time to work out personal relationships is difficult. You know, that requires leadership you want doesn't copying an exciting brand. Yeah. So why did a lot of these big institutions not reinvent themselves? Not opt for leadership? I think because they got really excited by the innovation theater.
00:27:33:05 - 00:28:00:02
Matt Hooper
That's a thesis I've been developing with research and work on this, this book that I mentioned, but also it's something that I couldn't put into words while I was living it. Like I'm 34, so I am, as I said, like a perfect millennial age, born in 88 and the experience of being 22, 23, 24 at that time, particularly in New York, was like, you became like a millennial whisperer.
00:28:00:10 - 00:28:24:06
Matt Hooper
You would like to explain to senior executives what was happening. They'd be like, Why are people wearing hoodies to work? What's going on here? Whatever. And it was like I spent half my time explaining that people were actually working really hard on stuff. It's just what they were working hard on. Didn't require receptionists or hardware beyond your laptop or cubicles where you had to do secret calls.
00:28:24:06 - 00:28:49:06
Matt Hooper
You know, everything was just a little more open, but but, you know, culture change in the way you work does not necessarily yield innovation either. Yeah, and I think that's the other lesson of the last ten years was what what happened? What changed? I happen to love we work. I love the spaces, the people that I met there, a lot of them, my friends who are former executives, etc., genuinely phenomenal people.
00:28:49:06 - 00:29:10:24
Matt Hooper
And I think that the vision for we work was transformative. But was it like corporate innovation did like a corporate change by working out if we work? I hope so, yeah. But I think the jury's still out. I don't have an opinion on that. And more than not having an opinion, more importantly, I don't have proof. Yeah, I don't have data one way or another, but I so I think the skeptics are like, that was all a mess.
00:29:10:24 - 00:29:24:17
Matt Hooper
What the hell was that about? And that's not fair. Yeah, but I think the folks that are maybe too positive, right? Like put some cool graffiti looking, littering on your office, get a bunch of young people in beanbags into a room, and suddenly the corporate changes. I think that's naive too.
00:29:25:06 - 00:29:36:06
Matt Hooper
I think it takes this hard work and it takes a broken record. But, you know, I have an agenda. I do genuinely. I believe in it. It takes leadership. All of this requires leadership.
00:29:36:06 - 00:29:58:17
Rob Napoli
So I don't think you kind of bring that out because we wrap. Innovation is a thing with like branding and why a company is it's easier to kind of rebrand and slap a new logo or some new colors or, you know, different times of year, like update their logo for like the month of whatever we're kind of wanting to highlight.
00:29:59:08 - 00:30:23:20
Rob Napoli
And that all looks like forward thinking and innovative, but it's not. It's just doing things that we wrap innovation on that actually don't change much, if at all, even to your point of like you don't have the data on it because we don't tangibly see it the same way and what. So I'm really excited because part two of this conversation is going to be how do startups and corporates really learn to work together now?
00:30:23:20 - 00:30:48:18
Rob Napoli
Understand what kind of innovation and leadership looks like? Part two of the conversation is going to be how do they work together? But I think it's really important for everyone out there to understand what leadership means, not just from an executive level, but from your individual level and how you bring that into what you do and how you try to do that to make a positive change in the environment that you're in.
00:30:49:13 - 00:31:07:16
Rob Napoli
And that's what I love about this concept of open innovation. That's why I was really excited to chat about this. And it really starts because for me I had a jaded view open innovation and corporate innovation was bullshit, right? Because I've only been on the after I've worked in corporates before, but a different capacity is mostly recruitment, which is not going to edit anything.
00:31:08:07 - 00:31:36:12
Matt Hooper
No, totally. Totally. And by the way, it's like you and I are also over. I think the generational thing here is big. And again, as we wrap up this conversation before going into part two, I think there's something I want to say about this. Like I was reading I was reading recently this this study that a lot of folks in Generation Z coming out of school, in the pandemic university, in the pandemic, I should clarify, are looking for roles at large corporations.
00:31:36:12 - 00:31:56:04
Matt Hooper
I saw that Microsoft was and we'll put in the show notes maybe the article that the that Microsoft was the most popular choice of employer and they were looking at other cities, more affordable cities than sort of the largest metropolitan areas you think about. So Scottsdale, Arizona, at least in the U.S., was the most popular choice of city.
00:31:56:19 - 00:32:01:04
Matt Hooper
Now, when I was coming out of school, it's like you wanted to work at a startup and live in Brooklyn.
00:32:01:23 - 00:32:32:14
Matt Hooper
And so it's really interesting, right, just how different that was. And I think it's because again, I don't the data this is anecdotal, but I think it's because our crisis coming out of school was jobs. The crisis now is quite different. It's a combination of inflation and supply chain and I think in general, extreme discord, like real discord like we are in a societally complicated place vis a vis climate change, vis a vis the war in Ukraine, vis a vis the pandemic.
00:32:32:14 - 00:32:51:18
Matt Hooper
But when we were coming out of school as a recession and what that genuinely meant first in the wake of the housing crisis, was a lack of immediate jobs for young people. Yeah. Which has had a long tail effect of, you know, really complicated things where we've seen with low home ownership for a generation, the first generation in modern American history who will make less than their parents and so on.
00:32:52:10 - 00:33:03:17
Matt Hooper
And I think that the excitement that came in big cities that might seem to 22 year olds now sort of cringe, was based on the sense that you can make your own job.
00:33:04:21 - 00:33:27:02
Matt Hooper
And so the hustle culture, the, the, you know, like disruptor be disrupted culture which has had negative impacts genuine but that drew the attention of the corporates in the first place that made the Microsofts want to innovate rather than just a place for stable employment and maybe down the line a place for so-called quiet quitting, you know, which yeah.
00:33:27:03 - 00:33:31:08
Rob Napoli
As I say, that whole new trend now is quitting, trying to hold a job, but actually even.
00:33:31:09 - 00:34:00:12
Matt Hooper
Do the millennial aspect of it. Just to tie a bow on that thought is one that was completely unique and circumstantial to an economic moment. Yeah. And worth understanding as such that that like I can look back and see the cringing parts of we work the real ramifications of disrupt or be disrupted and so on. And I can see what parts of innovation theater weren't, but I can also see a moment when again, you know, younger kids, they grew up with this stuff.
00:34:00:12 - 00:34:26:07
Matt Hooper
I was 19 when the smartphone came out. And so like this was new and there was a new reaction had never happened before. And the sense of fear that had come from both a generational wipe out of employment opportunities and at the same exact time, rapid technological advancement that even a handful of years you had ubiquitous Wi-Fi, mobile phones with ubiquitous Wi-Fi and tablets that have been in about a three or four year period.
00:34:26:07 - 00:34:52:11
Matt Hooper
Yeah. And then there were the rise of social networks like Facebook and Twitter on, you know, made possible by those technological advancements. So you were suddenly constantly online and constantly accessing information online. At the same time, that was a reaction to the sort of innovation theater was a reaction to that. And now it's up to these corporates having seen what was performative yeah over the last ten years to do something real and to do something real requires yes.
00:34:52:11 - 00:35:10:21
Matt Hooper
Open innovation, which I think we're saying. But it requires something that comes first in the chronology and something that gives the open innovation process lift off, which is serious leadership. Yeah, I think that's a good place to actually drop the mic and and tell everyone to come back for part two.
00:35:10:21 - 00:35:27:10
Rob Napoli
Yeah, I mean, I love that point and I 100% agree with you and this whole Gen Z thing. And I was surprised too. And I still like data, but we learned what, you know, part of the whole millennial movement was because we also didn't want to be stuck in the same job for 20 years, working up a ladder and all those things.
00:35:27:10 - 00:35:49:17
Rob Napoli
And, you know, now Gen Z looks at like, I don't want to be hustling, scraping, living paycheck to paycheck when I can go work for a big corporate and a better cost of living city and travel. I do think also the one thing you didn't touch on, that's the big pieces, the influencer culture, this content creator society, that if you have more money and and a better cost of living, you can go do the things in other cities where.
00:35:51:11 - 00:36:13:07
Matt Hooper
You can make money. Yeah, I do push back on one thing, though, which is that you don't want a life where you work your way up the ladder. I don't. I mean, I'm you and I lived it like that wasn't really an opportunity. I do want to be clear about that. That I mean, now you actually have an opportunity to find stable employment in a way that was not available to graduates 12 years ago or 14 years ago or ten years ago.
00:36:13:07 - 00:36:39:15
Matt Hooper
But that that period from like 07 to 2012, you know, that that wasn't it was different. Yeah. And the employer and so, you know, previous generations have been like I don't want to work at the same insurance company because I want it. I want freedom, I want creativity. I get that. But I think having professionally come of age at a time when you get a job, insurance company, I just think again, it's a little bit different.
00:36:39:15 - 00:36:54:16
Rob Napoli
Yeah, well, what I mean by that, though, is like you can be in one field, i.e. you can have a startup. And then because of your experience in a startup, you can actually go get a job at an amazing organization, bank and open innovation. You wouldn't be able to make that transition if you didn't work up the corporate ladder.
00:36:54:16 - 00:37:19:16
Rob Napoli
You're not the only lateral move or move. You're making it in the same industry. You couldn't jump in your shoes and say, I have a great experience and I've done some amazing things as an entrepreneur and tech. Let me see how I can bring that to the financial world and help with fintech or into the insurance world. And you didn't have that opportunity to maybe make those movements sideways or into new industries the same way that we had the we created that in the millennial generation.
00:37:19:16 - 00:37:33:13
Matt Hooper
So just one really good point that exactly that it's funny you say that. So we started this conversation again, always in the middle of the conversation, ironically, which is how a lot of these things go. Yeah, but for folks who are listening or watching, this is familiar to them. These are these buzzwords. And if they're not, reach out.
00:37:33:14 - 00:37:57:18
Matt Hooper
Happy to discuss it. But what's in it? You just said we made that possible. That's true. That like we're talking about open innovation, which Henry Hesburgh of sort of proffered that is a theory back in 2003 became a practice right it was it was an actual like in my world for example, it's been my job, you know, either specifically or generally for seven years.
00:37:57:21 - 00:37:58:00
Rob Napoli
Yeah.
00:37:58:23 - 00:38:17:21
Matt Hooper
So you're right. That was made possible. The even the idea the David and Goliath insurgents and incumbents, corporate start ups can work together at all in the first place. You're right. That was made possible in that last in that last run in the last in the last ten years. And and maybe that's, again, getting parts of this geared up.
00:38:19:01 - 00:38:33:18
Matt Hooper
I do think that what's been missing just to full circle this, we have all the pieces in play. But what distinguishes what allows open innovation to succeed and keep it from being open innovation theater is leadership.
00:38:33:18 - 00:38:51:15
Rob Napoli
Yeah hundred percent as a great way to end so for us part one so part one was talking really about leadership and leadership in open innovation. Part two is going to be all about how do corporates and startups work together and something that and that and I can talk for hours on. So I'll kind of keep it short and sweet and I'm excited for you all to tune in to that one.
00:38:51:24 - 00:39:09:24
Rob Napoli
That, as always, this has been a lot of fun for those at Bear Nation. Thank you so much for those of 2030 leadership. Thank you so much. Bear Nation listeners go subscribe to 2030 Leadership Newsletter. It will be worth your while 2030 newsletter and subscribers. Check out the Bare Necessities podcast as there's a lot else to.
00:39:09:24 - 00:39:29:22
Matt Hooper
Be worth your while. Yeah. And I will say that like only in this kind of conversation, everybody can you learn about open innovation more broadly, right? And like we've been using that and now it's now it's you. Next time it's going to be specific and within the realm of open innovation, this idea that corporate the startups collaborate, how is that done practically?
00:39:31:02 - 00:39:50:13
Matt Hooper
You know, that that that's a that's the that's the cliffhanger will be for you you know and I'm not going to say you're not going to learn if you don't subscribe, but you might not you might never know the answers to those things. You might just be curious the rest of your life.
00:39:50:13 - 00:39:56:01
Rob Napoli
Absolutely. Well that once again thank you. And to out there stay well and rise out.
OUTRO
00:39:59:00 - 00:40:08:21
Rob Napoli
Bear Nation. Thanks for listening to the bear necessities of entrepreneurship. We enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe and leave us a review