On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Kaiser Yang, Co-founder of Platypus Labs and Author of the new book Crack the Code. Kaiser and I talk about the mindsets needed to foster creativity and innovation. And some of the pitfalls you can avoid when trying to spin up your innovation initiatives.Inside Outside Innovation as the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript of Kaiser Yang, Co-founder of Platypus Labs and Author of Crack the CodeBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Kaiser Yang. He is co-founder of Platypus Labs and author of the book Crack the Code: Eight Surprising Keys to Unlock Innovation. Welcome. Kaiser Yang: Hey, thank you so much, Brian. I'm delighted to be here and be a part of your program. Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on the show. We got connected through Josh Linkner. I was interviewing him about his new book, Big Little Breakthroughs. And he reached out recently to say, hey, Kaiser's got a new book out in and around this particular subject. You've worked with some great companies out there when it comes to Innovation, Heineken, and ESPN, and Coca-Cola. What are some of the most common problems that companies are trying to solve when it comes to Innovation?Kaiser Yang: There's a number of challenges that we help organizations focus on and prioritize. But it really starts at the leadership level of prioritizing Innovation, building the right set of rituals and rewards that motivates team members to drive inventive thinking in their day-to-day responsibilities. And so, we do spend a lot of time working from the leadership level first understanding what the desired state is. What some of the desired outcomes are.And crafting a strategy. And that strategy, it could involve a number of different things from bringing thought leadership to the organization, doing training workshops, running Innovation, bootcamps. Sometimes it even just comes down to creating inspiration and motivation in terms of ideas, like giving them the power to recognize patterns outside of their industry. So, they can innovate their own and challenge the status quo. So, for us, I think when we first work with organizations, it has to start at the top. Meaning there needs to be a commitment to driving innovation and making it a priority. And then it makes the rest of the initiatives so much smoother moving forward.Brian Ardinger: That is so important that context setting. Because I think a lot of times organizations get off the wrong track because they don't necessarily define Innovation the same way. A lot of people think of innovation as I've got to come up with the next electric car or new Uber. And as you know, Innovation can be something much simpler as far as, you know, how do you find it and identify a problem and create something of value to solve that problem. And a lot of the book talks about that creative problem-solving area that doesn't have to be transformational, but it can be little breakthroughs that make a difference. Kaiser Yang: Absolutely. It's a philosophy that I share with Josh. And his book, Big Little Breakthroughs is all about the fact that we should look for everyday acts of creativity or what he calls micro innovations.And for us too, when we work with organizations, we obviously want to look at transformational opportunities, high growth opportunities. But sometimes when you look at Innovation, just in that context, it can be paralyzing for most of the team members, right. Unless it's a billion-dollar Elon Musk type idea th