Laurel Lau is the founder of the innovation consultancy Six Atlas and author of the book Interplay: How to become a top innovator. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder talks with Laurel about her experiences helping manufacturing companies innovate, the impact of the Corona virus on global supply chain, and what might actually happen after disruption going forward.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO, a provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Interview TranscriptBrian Ardinger:  Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. Today we have Laurel Lau. She is a founder of the innovation consultancy Six Atlas and author of the new book Interplay: How to become a top innovator. Welcome to the show. Laurel Lau: Thanks for having me Brian. Brian Ardinger: Hey. I'm excited to have you on the show. You are living in Lisbon right now. We are taping this March 22nd so Corona virus has locked everybody down. What brought you to Lisbon? What kind of work are you doing in the world of innovation there? Laurel Lau: I am helping a Chinese company with innovation program. They bring international brands into China and help them sell there. They've worked with P & G and Unilever back in the days, but I was helping them with building up the innovation program, so help them to become more systematic in it. Brian Ardinger: I wanted to have you on, because you've got a new book out called Interplay, and you're talk a lot about the culture of innovation and that. Let's start by telling the audience about the book. Laurel Lau: The book is a result of me having experienced startup, working in startup and also doing a lot of coaching for startup founders. As I've gone through my journey, I realized that the way that we approach collaboration, yes we've been taught how to make it into process, and make it a little bit more systematic, but at the same time, there's a huge communication aspect and relationship aspect that's been missing for me to see that people are using these skillsets to be able to develop sustainable solutions.Brian Ardinger: So what are some of the core skills that you think make an innovator more effective than others? Laurel Lau: Let's bring it back to like where we're at right now. Everyone is social distancing. Everyone is quarantining. The whole economy is collapsing at this point. How do we know how often these type of crisis will happen in the world? I think it's being able to have foresight of seeing what kind of dangers our world is heading into and having that larger perspective is really, really important. One aspect that I bring CEO's to be able to understand is to understand the daily nuance problems that people might be having, might be reflecting a larger issue, that if you use a right communication skills to get to the bottom of it, you'll be able to unravel it much easier.Brian Ardinger: Unpack that a little bit. Can you give a story or example about how somebody actually effectively does that?Laurel Lau: A lot of times when I head into a company and do consulting, first I'll do as a reality check and get a lot of interviews done. Read a lot of their reports. Go to a lot of their meetings, show out the factories and understand their product and the services that they provide. What happens during that time when I'm trying to understand more is being able to connect the dots. A lot of times during this part of reality check, people might be revealing half the story, 10% of the story, but as consultants going in asking more questions and seeing