[MUSIC PLAYING]
The pioneering firm Innovator's DNA, which
was co-founded by Clay Christensen, Hal Gregersen, and Jeffrey Dyer,
conducted a study over many years of whether or not successful innovators
shared any common traits.
After researching over 1,600 firms and individuals,
they boiled it down to five common skills
that all of these innovative firms and individuals share.
The first is experimenting, something that we also encounter in music.
Whether it's through songwriting or in the recording studio.
The guitar pioneer Les Paul is famous for having pioneered
all kinds of recording techniques, including multI-tracking,
or new ways of recording the guitar and new voicings,
through this constant process of experimentation.
So much of our upbringing in our generation
has been about congratulating success based on getting it right
or getting it wrong, and that happens at childhood.
And I think that if we can encourage people with a pat on the back
when you put effort, when you've worked hard, when the process of achievement--
whether or not it is exactly what you wanted it to be--
can be encouraged as much as the product.
Encouraging the making to think versus the thinking to make,
you'll arrive at an incredible solution.
And you'll have learned all these things along the way that are so priceless.
I have all these sort of development processes that I do.
So I'll literally go in there and just start, like,
scrolling through software instruments, and playing
whatever happens, and then I go, oh, that's cool, and then I record it.
So it's generated by the sound of the instrument,
and there's all kinds of ways to sort of spark
yourself to let go of trying to control or-- I'm writing a song now,
and have it be a little bit more playful.
It's like, if you've ever-- I'm sure you've watched a little kid.
You know how they just pick up two things
and they try to put them together, and if they can't they just throw them down
and pick up two more things?
That's kind of what I do.
In a very-- a little bit more adult way.
Another skill that successful innovators share is the process of networking.
They're really good at developing communities and friendships.
Think of a musician like Miles Davis, who was able to endlessly reinvent
himself and whether it's on albums like Bitches Brew, or Kind of Blue,
by effectively going out there and getting a number of different musicians
to come together, and through the process
of collaboration come up with something absolutely unique and different.
Entrepreneurs are good at not so much selling people a concept,
but getting people to want to be part of something.
Yeah.
It's so important for the project that you're
building to be about them, as well.
Because a lot people, like, in Berkeley as well, are like, yeah,
I'm trying to make a band.
So I'm going to pay my musician.
It's not about that.
Like, they really have to believe in your mission and your vision.
The third skill is questioning.
Well, isn't all music an act of rebellion, challenging authority,
and wanting to put an imprint on the world
through the act of your own expression?
When I very first started in the kitchen, I was extremely young
and I remember this one chef-- they all used to tell me certain things, right?
You can't do it like that.
You have to do it like this.
And I would always say, well, what happens if I do it like this,
and they'd say, no, no, no, no, no.
You have to do it like that.
There was one chef that said something to me.
He said, you can't set pineapple juice into jelly.
I said, come on, guys, of course you can.
And finally they gave me a reason.
They said, no, there's an enzyme.
I said, but listen.
It has to be possible.
So the following day, I came in, it was my day off,
and eight or nine hours later, I took a container, threw it across the bench,
and I said, pineapple jelly.
And they're like, how did you do that?
And I said, I don't know, that's not the question.
I said the question is, how many things are you
telling me that can't be done that can actually be done?
That really taught me that just because it's done that way,
doesn't mean it has to be done that way.
The other skill set that successful innovators
and successful, groundbreaking musicians share is what we call association.
Think of a band like the Beatles hearing Indian music through Ravi Shankar
and incorporating that into their own music on an album
like Sgt. Pepper and the song "Within You Without You."
Fusing Indian music with rock music, associating the two,
and creating something entirely unique and entirely different.
I mean, you think about Mark Ronson in that Amy Winehouse record.
I mean, first you have Amy Winehouse and it's retro,
but it also sounds so unique.
It's probably because of her voice, and her vocal style,
and her lyrics which are-- but you see it's
a combination, because if she had just been singing about ooh, I love him,
and ooh, this, and ooh, that it would've been too much of a copy of the '50s,
early '60s girl group stuff.
But because of her gritty sensibility and her weird voice,
it turned into something else.
The last skill set that successful innovators have is observation.
Nothing of Marvin Gaye is what's going on.
Marvin Gaye was moved by the environment and the changes that
were happening in American society during the Vietnam War.
So the process of observation is both critical in company building,
as well as in the creative process, and yet another commonality
that we see between the two.