#126—William Duggan: Navigating the Corporate Labyrinth—A Guide for Internal Innovators

Outthinkers

William Duggan is lecturer of strategy and innovation at Columbia Business School, and the author of four books on innovation: Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (2007); Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation (2012); and The Seventh Sense: How Flashes of Insight Change Your Life (2015), and his most recent work: Corporate Innovator: A Guide Through the Labyrinth, published in 2024.

In his book, Bill covers employee-driven innovation. Bill dives deep into a dilemma he found resurfacing time and again in his research from interviews he conducted: the seemingly never-ending maze that corporate employees face in trying to bring their ideas to reality.

Here we cover insights from his into how employees can navigate “the corporate labyrinth,” and how employers can lower the obstacles they (usually unwittingly) put in the path of would-be internal innovators.
In this podcast, he shares:

• An explanation in neurological—yet easy to understand terms—of the way in which our minds come up with new ideas
• The way in which organizations often create endless obstacles to people innovating within their roles—hence his apt metaphor of the labyrinth
• Practical techniques for how individuals can navigate and overcome these obstacles to successfully navigate this corporate labyrinth

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
1:20—Introducing Bill + the topic of today’s episode
3:37—If you really know me, you know that...
4:26—Defining strategy
04:54—Motivation that lead to writing Corporate Innovator
07:17—Research approach for Corporate Innovator
9:36—The corporate labyrinth
11:55—Where innovative ideas come from
13:38—Techniques for generating more ideas
15:24—The idea hierarchy obstacle
18:08—Tunnel vision and the core business
20:15—The Ally Maze: managing up, across, and down
22:41—Tyranny of the team
24:29—Mind games
24:41—Effective language for discussing new ideas with your team
24:38—Handling "bad" ideas constructively
27:10—How can people follow you and continue learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
Faculty page: https://business.columbia.edu/faculty/people/william-duggan
Link to book: Corporate Innovator: A Guide Through the Labyrinth

Thank you to our guest. Thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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