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Finding Core Value

Lesson 30 from: Jumpstart Innovation with Adventurous Thinking

Sally Dominguez

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Lesson Info

30. Finding Core Value

Lesson Info

Finding Core Value

We're gonna talk about finding core value. So we have the worksheet that I mentioned, that talks about, "How do you see success?" We need to know about value, because value unites people. Value is a human thing. I'm not sure that you could ask even a really intelligent computer to understand value, unless it was monetary. Cause value is something that basically has gone through a process of motivation, selection, evaluation, and appraisal. We've looked at something and we've evaluated it to see whether in fact that is something of intrinsic value to us. and value is also about growth. Now the key with core value is, as I said, you can apply it to anything. You can apply it to what you're really good at, your fundamental characteristics. And in our Dory Clark branding lesson, we actually talked about going out and asking people for three words that describe you. When you get all your three words back, you may find some of these repeat and actually help you establish one of your personal...

core values. Talking to one of my students today, we were talking about integrity. All of the words she got back reflected integrity. If integrity is your core value, we now have something that we can manipulate and work with. So the aim of rethinking is not just to establish your core value, cause you could've done that without being particularly creative. That's like a self-understanding and maybe you ask yourself how success looks to hone it, but basically you can come up with that without me. And what we're gonna do once we have it is make that core value work much harder. So here's an excellent Mahatma Gandhi quote that sort of does that in a way, that naval-gazing, that is required if you really need to come up with your personal core value. So the thing about rethinking is it can be intensely personal, if we're talking about your attributes, the value you bring others, but it doesn't have to be. You can also do this in a company, dealing with the core value of, say, the Boppit, to bring memories and activation. The core value of a system, you know? So basically, it's useful in many aspects, but what I have found is that this lens really resonates with people who are seeking to work out what they should be doing, the most fulfilling thing they could be doing, and to apply creative thinking to work out what a next step might be that is completely unexpected. So, when you're trying to give yourself a five minute of creative thinking every day, don't discount core value. Don't discount rethinking. Cause you might be super happy doing what you're doing, but this is yet another way to throw us into something that we understand really really well, our expert brain, throw us, whoop, right out into the possible and the imagination, from this anchor, this value. So the worksheet looked like this. It's a really, really simple worksheet. It's deceptively-- It's deceptive; it's deceptively simple. Because actually, establishing a core value is hard enough without trying to establish what success looks like to you. You know, is success money? Or is success recognition? Or is success impact? These are all things that are gonna warp and change depending on what your core value is and depending on your maturity and depending on your state of mind at the time. But it's a handy question, what does success look like. Cause it does help you, then, when you have all these options thrown out by the lens, it helps you filter through what might actually be useful, to know what it is you're looking for in terms of success. So that's why we have that part. So I wanna give you a couple of examples of looking at core value and then making it work harder. And the first one I've got is possibly my favorite. Mike Yurosek, the Californian carrot farmer. So these are not Mike's carrots, but they're carrots that probably look a lot like Mike's carrots. And if you have a look at them, they're a pretty good, generic looking carrot, and they've been trimmed. So anybody that gardens would know that when you grow a carrot, it doesn't necessarily look like these carrots. This is the very Peter Rabbit beautiful looking carrot that comes when you trim a carrot down, make it pretty at the top, and basically chuck out all the ones that had that split off two-leg thing going on at the bottom. So Mike was growing carrots. And his core value, there were two, two major values. The first was he grew a really tasty carrot, and the second was he had really good relationships with big buyers, the sort of Safeways, Tesco type Costco people. So Mike is growing carrots, he's supplying them to supermarkets, but he's finding that he's losing a lot of his crop in the trim. So in order to make a carrot that you, the consumer, wanna buy, Mike is having to chop them down and make them a little bit more pointy and chuck out the ones that look a bit twisty and dodgy. He's having to trim the top. It's costing him a lot of trim money. And he's also losing about a third of his crop to trimming and waste. Mike is the guy that took his core value and simply looked at it and thought, "How can I repackage this a different way?" He is the guy that invented the baby carrot. He didn't start growing the natural baby carrots that are just little tiny carrots. He simply took his chopping machine and worked out how to chop these things into small finger-sized morsels of carrot that almost completely reduced the waste, while providing someone with something that has this attribute that we call kawaii. That is, in its smallness, it is incredibly cute and plays on our emotions. So he makes baby carrots, he packages them, calls them baby carrots, and US carrot consumption doubles, because of the way Mike cut his carrots. So he kept his core value, but he re-thought what he was gonna do with those things. In fact, what he did was minimized. So we're gonna look at three ways that we can manipulate core value. We're gonna magnify, we're gonna minimize or simplify, and we're gonna repurpose. And Mike did this simple thing of changing the way he cut his carrots. He was already cutting. It's not even a massive machining cost. But he was able to minimize them, change them into this little module of a carrot, appeal to people's emotions, make them bite-sized, all the things that come with like a cute little dude. It's interesting that when he first started cutting them, he went too small. He went for these things called Bunny Nuggets, that were like little round balls. Now, everyone that's owned a bunny will know that a bunny dropping looks like that. So that would be an orange bunny dropping, never gonna sell. Don't worry, Mike just went back and cut them a bit bigger. So he got the perfect finger-sized carrot. This is the key to understanding core value. Another classic example that I love is Gordon Murray. Gordon Murray is a car designer. Not just a car designer, he's incredible. He's core values, I would say, are performance and technology. And he is the designer of the McLaren F1, which is a very very beautiful, high-performing race car. However, Gordon Murray will say that his greatest design achievement is not the McLaren F1, but the Ox flatbed truck, where he took technology and performance and repurposed it to something greater. He created a flat pack truck that can ship in a container, assemble in 12 hours by non-skilled people, to work with really really capable four-wheel drive in rough terrain in developing countries. Really cheap, super easy to make. All the parts are modular, so the windscreen is in three parts, which means you can substitute if one gets cracked. The whole thing totally uses technology and performance, but it repurposes it in a completely different way. So his core value hasn't changed. You could probably argue he's done more with it, with this Ox flatbed truck. So this is what we're gonna try and do with core value. We need to have one thing and then we're gonna manipulate it these ways. We're gonna magnify, which expands. So basically if we have a thing, we're gonna make it either repeat more frequently, make it physically larger, or make it outreach to more people. If you do something that's a person to person, then we're gonna take it to a neighborhood or a country. If you have an object that is consumer scale, we're gonna take it to a community scale or an industrial scale. So that is basically what magnify is. We're gonna run through a couple of your core values and see how they work on this. Minimize means we're gonna strip away essentials. We're gonna perhaps just take one element of what that is and turn it into something tiny and simple. Maybe it's an app, maybe it's a tiny person to person thing. If you're a big business delivering to businesses, how does that translate if you take it to one person? And finally, repurpose. We're gonna take that core value. We're gonna do what Gordon Murray did and turn it to have more impact, to have greater worth. So how do we do that? We have to think about, "Who didn't we design this for? "Who isn't this servicing?" And we have to force our brain to bounce out of what we know about this core value and look for where we're not pointed. We're gonna sort of wave around in all these unusual directions and see if we can grab something and connect it in to this core value we know so well, to come up with the next great step.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Creativity Quiz Worksheet
Rebound Worksheet
Core Value Worksheet
Innovation Quadrant Worksheet
Which Lens Worksheet
Backcasting Worksheet

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Ratings and Reviews

Ivana Vucinic
 

This class is truly AMAZING! It is really unique and it got me thinking in new and innovative ways. Very much out of the box thinking! Makes you become courageous, Well done, Sally!!!

Sukey Dominguez
 

Jumpstart Innovation with Adventurous Thinking exceeded my expectations! Sally brought practical tools that, "lenses" to flip every situation inside out and find the possibilities in every situation. As one who works to lead teams, healthcare providers facing incredible demands to achieve results in population health / ultimately global health and the wellness of business operations, I'm thrilled to have found this course. Design is one thing, taking risk is another. I'm inspired by Sally because she drives energy to see what CAN be in the future. This is a unique class and I look forward to her next offering.

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