Seeding Innovation: The Path to Profit and Purpose in the 21st Century

By Robyn O'Brien

Build and grow a company ready for the next generation of consumers

In Seeding Innovation: The Path to Profit and Purpose in the 21st Century, veteran entrepreneur, award winning author, global strategist, speaker, and Rice University Innovation and Entrepreneurship professor, Robyn O’Brien, delivers an insightful and data driven roadmap to authenticity and smart leadership in the face of accelerating technological, environmental, and social change. In the book, you’ll discover how to build resilience, authenticity, market share and purpose into your business plan and move beyond box-ticking, virtue signaling and one-dimensional metrics, in a way that strengthens your business model, enhances your bottom line, attracts investors, fortifies employee retention, and more.

With her characteristic candor and attention to data and deep experience on the frontlines of industry change, Robyn explains how you can transform concepts like paradigm blindness, scarcity, imposter syndrome, rejection, and fear to build durable, lasting, and profitable businesses that integrate social and environmental principles, with courage and integrity to drive long term shareholder and stakeholder value.

You’ll also discover how to:

• Develop a purpose-driven product line that holds strong appeal for new generations of consumers and avoids the ruthless practices associated with PR nightmares and externalized costs
• Build an iconic company that focuses on integrating meaningful change to inspire customers, investors, and employees and that eschews meaningless press releases and virtue signaling
• Overcome imposter syndrome and naysayers using the S.T.O.P. Protocol ™
• Develop supportive scaffolding and a resilient mindset in order to leverage courage and gain market share
• Build boards (not echo chambers), why equity and governance matters, and how diversity is good for your bottom line
• Integrate authentic marketing and storytelling into your brand strategy to drive revenue and capture market share
• Avoid the dangers of silos, fundraising traps and toxic capital and build a model with value-aligned, informed investors.
• Spot greenwashing, gender washing, and carbon washing, and more importantly, how to avoid them within your own organization and drive change
• Address headlines around ESG and DEI metrics in order to meet the needs of asset managers and investors, build successful teams and integrate goals that are central to outperformance and higher returns

Gen Z and the modern consumer are looking for companies with authenticity—they want transparency and purpose from brands that are future proofing for the planet they’re inheriting. With this changing consumer focus and mindset emerges an urgent need for emotionally intelligent leadership. Along with profitability, 21st century leaders must focus on environmental stewardship, equity and justice, employee retention, recruiting, collaboration, and emerging other key aspects of modern business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Apr 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9781394227112

Book preview

SEEDING INNOVATION

THE PATH TO PROFIT AND PURPOSE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

ROBYN O'BRIEN

Logo: Wiley

Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: O’Brien, Robyn, author.

Title: Seeding innovation : the path to profit and purpose in the 21st century/Robyn O’Brien.

Description: First edition. | Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2024] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023057809 (print) | LCCN 2023057810 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394227105 (cloth) | ISBN 9781394227129 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394227112 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Leadership. | Business planning. | Personnel management. | Organizational change.

Classification: LCC HD57.7 .O2688 2024 (print) | LCC HD57.7 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/092—dc23/eng/20240116

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023057809

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023057810

Cover Design: Wiley

Cover Image: © oscar tang/Shutterstock

Author Photo: Darcy Sherman of Sassafras Photography

Dedicated to my four incredible children,

Lexi, Colin, John, and Tory

Author's Note

DEAR READER,

If you have this book in your hands, you've decided to be part of the solution. Thank you.

There are so many titles this book could have had: Atomic Courage, A Smarter Future, Creating Solutions, Catalysts for Change, Informed Leadership.

In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned us what would happen if we didn't address our toxic systems. The World Bank recently did the same in a report called Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies. The data shared in Seeding Innovation, The Path to Profit and Purpose in the Twenty-first Century proves Carson's words true, with the help of entrepreneurs, innovators, thought leaders, the World Bank, and other asset managers. It also highlights the important role that women and whistleblowers play when it comes to change. As our clean air, clean water, clean soil, and biodiversity are depleted, we find ourselves in deep need of a diverse array of talents and innovative skill sets. As the European Central Bank shares, nature and our economies depend on it.

In April 2023, I was meeting with a friend who shared his concern about the world his kids are inheriting. I said, Someone needs to write a business leadership book on best practices that protect our kids' futures and the planet, that inspires people to participate in the solutions.

Two days later, an email appeared in my inbox from a senior editor at Wiley Publishing: Hello Robyn. My name is Brian. I'm Sr. Editor at Wiley publishing. I'd love to connect as I'm eager to know if you might have some interest in writing a book on how businesses can better implement sustainability practices, eliminate waste, etc. I'd love to connect and to discuss in more detail if you might have some interest.

If that isn't the universe responding, I don't know what is.

The day I received his email, my youngest child had just turned 18. I was about to have an empty nest. I'd spent two decades raising four children, while working in the food and finance industries, founding everything from nonprofits to financial service firms, all aimed at making clean and safe food affordable and accessible to anyone who wants it. To me, food security is a national security issue. I'd worked on these issues since my kids were little. I'd taken them to meetings with investors, members of Congress, to events at the State Capitol, and into product testing kitchens. I wanted them to understand that love is an action and that action is an antidote to despair.

In meetings, I watched as food and finance executives struggled with integrating meaningful, long-term change, whether that was around equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, environmental stewardship, conservation, or impact. I heard from countless investors and entrepreneurs, and I could still sense the fear and uncertainty in the capital markets. The industry hadn't fully mobilized.

There is clearly a hunger for change, solutions, and the courage needed to create them. I feel the demand for it every time I give a keynote. People are in search of inspiration and purpose and so hungry to be fueled by passion and courage.

I am fascinated by courage. It's something I developed early in my career, as the only woman on a team that managed $20 billion in assets, in an industry that is 98% white and male. We were a team of seven, and the guys asked me to cover the food industry. So I learned the operating models, the financials, which leadership teams were trustworthy, and which teams made me want to wash my hands after a meeting. I sat in on tech meetings to learn more. I wanted to not only understand what made a resilient business model, but also what made a resilient leader. I listened and learned.

When my youngest child suffered a life-threatening allergic reaction, I was called to display a courage I didn't know I had. I challenged the multinational food and chemical companies over their double standards, spoke out on price-gouging by the pharmaceutical companies, and found myself in situations where courage wasn't even a choice because staying silent was far riskier than any concern of speaking out. But courage also didn't come naturally. I had to learn how to be brave, how to find my voice, build a team, inspire a movement, again and again, and I found that a lot of people were asking for that: show me how I can be braver in my life.

What makes us brave? What holds us back? And what is it about fear and failure that keeps us playing small when we know something bigger like innovation and change need to happen?

I used to think that courage is the opposite of fear. I was wrong.

In fear, there is a sense of scarcity, that we may fail, that we may be abandoned and rejected. And so we convince ourselves that if we stay small, we can avoid the pain, discomfort, fear, and possibility of rejection.

Only it doesn't quite work that way. Because, when you abandon your potential and dreams, you essentially reject yourself, the truth of who you are, your hopes, dreams, and capabilities in order to play small. And that is the ultimate rejection. A rejection of your purest potential. You risk drowning under the weight of what ifs and what could have been.

But rarely can you just flip a switch and turn on courage. It usually isn't that easy. Courage is like a muscle, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. It's also contagious and will inspire others to be courageous too.

I am not going to go into a long list of everything that ails us right now on this planet that we share. There are daily headlines about it. If our debt levels are any indicator, it's clear that we are living beyond our means. We've got some huge environmental issues confronting us, but that also means that there is enormous opportunity to get involved and create solutions.

It is a brave thing to stand up in business (and life) and say, You know what? This is intolerable. Enough. There has to be something better. And to go about figuring out what that is and how to make it happen. Innovation and change won't happen without courage. Courage is at its core.

So how do you find the courage to take an idea and turn it into something? A product, a company, a movement, a campaign? What is required to move something from an idea that hits you in the shower to something that you put on a spreadsheet and then build a team and a company around? Because it is so clear that the world, all that we are facing, needs inspired, almost atomic, innovation and courage.

In Seeding Innovation, you will learn not only the mechanics of building out a business, but also how to embrace an attitude of curiosity over judgment and wonder over blame. You will learn how to take action steps, and with deep humility and honesty, explore and challenge the beliefs, patterns, relationships, and behaviors that are holding you back. You will encounter naysayers and nonbelievers. Many people, maybe even those closest to you, will want you to stay where you are, to play small, because you are more predictable there. And you will have a choice: to stay or to move forward toward your calling.

A calling is exactly that, a call, with a chance to answer it or decline it.

Answering that calling to innovate and to drive change in a world that values conformity and sameness is one of the bravest things you can do. It sets in motion a series of events that you may not yet see, challenges for which you don't yet have answers, and possibilities that are unfathomable. But if you feel that calling inside of you, to do something more, create something new, build something better, get really quiet and figure out how to answer it. Because the day we abandon our dreams, decline that call, is the day that we give up on ourselves.

So fear? Fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Fear is going to ride shotgun to innovation most of the way. Instead of running from it, you will learn how to embrace it, as the familiar friend that it is, and learn how to work with it and move through it. I will ask you to take inventory of your fears, so that you understand them, and as you do that, to also consider and weigh the deep fear of regret.

I will ask you to consider who you surround yourself with on this Journey (and it's a journey with a capital J), to investigate how homogenous that group currently is, and if that homogeneity creates a blind spot. We will take inventory on that too.

And there will be plenty of times that you will be tested. A lot of the work of an entrepreneur has nothing to do with the company you are building or the product you are creating. It has everything to do with what's going on in your head, what is happening between your ears. Resiliency is a critical resource, and self-awareness is an asset.

We will address how you talk to yourself. We will get to work on changing that internal dialogue, the criticism and even self-loathing, and identify the media and noise that is fueling the negativity that you've carried around for too long. Because those hidden fears—the voice in your head and its incessant chatter—can self-sabotage and shackle you to past behavior. The negativity, feeding yourself those thoughts, won't serve you as you move forward. It's like trying to not eat junk food while keeping a bunch of junk in your head. It doesn't work. We've got to clean out the junk. So we are going to get really brave and take inventory of that too.

I will share data to motivate you and stories to inspire you. You will hear from entrepreneurs who were homeless, sleeping on the floor of the San Francisco airport, who are now running multimillion dollar venture funds. You will hear from entrepreneurs who failed forward, out of the trunk of their cars into adding Rihanna and Jay-Z to their cap tables. And you will hear from entrepreneurs who revolutionized how we think about everything from water to investors.

All of these friends created something that helps move us forward, making people's lives better and meets us where we are as humans, addressing our fundamental need to be seen, heard, and loved. And all of them, in their darkest moments, leaned into a purpose that was greater than themselves to help propel them forward. I'll help you discover what that is too.

And through all of this, you'll develop your FQ score—your unique power and purpose.

I think that's why this entrepreneurial journey of innovation and the lessons that accompany it are so rewarding, because of how fundamentally human it is with its mistakes and imperfections, its learning curve and humility, its self-discovery and growth.

Innovation is the hero's journey, and if ever there was a time for heroes for our planet, that time is now. Thank you so much for answering that call to do something. I am here to support you, with resources, data, inspiration, and tools, because I've learned it is way easier to do this work when someone has your back. Let's get going.

—Robyn

1

Blind Spots and Big Opportunities

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

—R. Buckminster Fuller

FAULT LINES ARE emerging in business as we know it, and paradigm blindness is catching a lot of companies off guard.

For those innovating, creating, and designing, the opportunity couldn't be bigger. You only need to look to the auto industry to understand how quickly change is happening, as the car industry electrifies to decarbonize road transportation.

But what gives innovation life? What turns an idea into a successful business model? Most of us have hundreds of ideas every day, but how do we get an idea out of our head and into action?

It has as much to do with mindset as it has to do with access to capital. It has as much to do with the structure of our belief systems and how we handle setbacks as it has to do with the structure of our balance sheets and how we handle the competition. And it has as much to do with how we respond to imposter syndrome and naysayers as it has to do with how we treat our team and employees.

If you're launching a business, a new product, or service, you'll confront all of this. My goal is to not only help you to seed innovation, but also to do it successfully, which means there is a lot to cover, so let's get started.

From the Shower to the Spreadsheet

If you ask entrepreneurs what happened to them when their idea cut loose in their brain, they'll tell you it took on a creative life of its own. It became an obsession. We all have ideas. So many of them. But what makes us act on them? To write them down? What makes us brave enough to share them with someone? And keep working on them in the face of remarkable odds?

Nolan Bushnell, cofounder of Atari, said, Everyone who has taken a shower has had an idea. But it's the people who get out of the shower, towel off, and do something about it that makes the difference.

An idea that motivates you so much that it inspires you to take action. An idea that makes inhibition, fear, rejection, even ridicule and derision tolerable. Why do some people give their ideas life while others leave them tucked away in their minds? Why do some unshackle an idea and let it run, while others bury it?

How does a concept become reality? And how do you get an idea from the shower to a spreadsheet? Anyone can dream about building the Empire State Building, but how do you actually do it?

Ideas shape the course of history.

—John Maynard Keynes

There is an obsession with entrepreneurship. And wrapped around that obsession, you will find courage and naysayers, scaffolding, and failed ideas. You will find heartache and joy, monumental mistakes, and wild successes. You will find cheerleaders and support systems, and you will find dark nights of the soul.

When you were a kid, you probably had something that you obsessed over. Maybe it was cars, or baseball cards, BMX bikes, stickers, or unicorns. You collected them; you were all in. People knew you for it. You lived and breathed it. It was probably your first obsession. Mine? A collection of Coca-Cola cans from around the world, in varying sizes and shapes with different languages on them. I was fascinated by the ability of one brand to create universal awareness across hundreds of languages with its colors and fonts. I loved collecting them.

The passion, focus, and obsession in entrepreneurship is similar to that of the unbridled passion of a child. You lock in and can't not think about it, you can't not do it. When someone suggests that you do something else, it's as if they're asking you not to breathe or to unplug your heart. It's not an option.

Something makes you step out of the shower and into building out your idea, and you begin to live its creations, and life gets singular really fast. There is a fierce focus and courage, and a willingness to face fear, other people's opinions, and society's conditioning in order to make way for creativity and innovation.

Which may be why so many ideas fail to launch, because it requires so much of us psychologically, physically, emotionally, and even spiritually.

Too often, business leadership books only focus on the financial aspects of starting a business, the operational aspects, the team building, and the logistics. But what about the headspace of the entrepreneur? The internal dialogue? The ongoing criticism? Their support system? Their lack of one? How often is faith challenged when an entrepreneur is pushed to an unimaginable pain point? How often has imposter syndrome sabotaged more ideas than lack of funding?

The recipe for entrepreneurship contains all of this, and courage could not be more important.

We need innovation—new, collaborative ideas, and smarter business models, and we need courage to execute them.

Why? Because we are staring down some pretty sizable problems, and it's clear that business as usual isn't going to cut it. In fact, none of the world's top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use. In a sobering report (TRUCOST, 2013), the world's biggest industries burn through $7.3 trillion worth of free natural capital a year. And it's the only reason they turn a profit.

Only it's not free, we're paying a very steep price for it.

So what is natural capital? Things like clean air, clear water, healthy soils, the basic things we need to survive. Think of them as nature's capital. They aren't on balance sheets, but every company on the planet depends on them, as does every person. So when a company burns through them, pollutes them, and destroys this natural capital, it's called externalized costs. These are the costs not paid for by a business but by society at large. For example, a corporation that pollutes local water sources with the spraying of its chemicals is externalizing the costs on to whoever drinks that water and whoever has to clean it up.

The concept of externalities is becoming increasingly familiar in business, from boardrooms to investors. Many first learned of this concept through the tobacco industry, when it became clear that smoking cigarettes causes cancer.