Inside Outside Innovation

In this episode, Brian Ardinger talks with Douglas Ferguson, founder of Voltage Control, a company focused on design sprints and getting new products to market. Douglas tries to look at the product as a whole unit and is convinced that ideas are worthless. It’s more about focused execution. Douglas brings an operators viewpoint, as he moves into consulting and thinking about Innovation from a broader perspective.  Brian and Douglas discuss some of the problems companies face, when building from within, including the desire to standardize. Companies try to jam everything together and avoid focusing on customers’ needs. For example, AT&T buys other company's services and then takes them to market. With this strategy, AT&T will never be able to provide a superb service, because they are so far from the consumer.  When companies try to innovate, often the problem is putting a lot of resource constraints on projects. Douglas uses a framework called Eco Cycles to view the innovation processes. Projects move fro