"The Heart of Innovation" by Matt Chanoff, Merrick Furst, Daniel Sabbah and Mark Wegman

Particularly technology businesses. Venture Capitalists know that 9 out of 10 of the start-ups they fund will fail. But they reckon they will get all their money back on the one that succeeds.

Because there is no "authentic demand" for what the bussinesses are offering. They are trying to sell something that customers doesn't want, even though customers may have said that they do in surveys.

Imagine a river. On one bank is the town, and on the other bank is the factory. The workers have to cross the river to get to and from the factory. Some row across in small boats. Some take a ferry. Others walk to a ford.

We build a bridge and charge a toll; soon, all the workers are crossing our on bridge.

The workers hadn’t demanded a bridge; they weren’t rationally solving a problem, and they weren’t responding to marketing.

This is authentic demand: it is when people do or buy things as part of living their lives.

The opposite of authentic demand is indifference.

Authentic demand is whatever you will “not not” do.

Something like I will not not leave home without locking the door and parents will not not send their children to school without shoes.

Three types of innovation:

1) Informative – improve an existing product: brake lights in the rear window, inertia safety belts. Replacing the old crank-handles to start the engines with a starter motor.

2) Transformative – applying technology into a new domain: chicken incubators adapted for premature babies. Or when a railway company moves into shipping. Amazon starts by selling books, but now look at it.

3) Formative – break-through - discovering penicillin or DNA?

Understand the type of innovation you are doing.

An example. I am a magician, and I need a volunteer to come up to the stage. I could offer him a prize – that would be like a Value Proposition – do x and you will get y.

But a “not not” situation is this.

I ask him his name, he tells me. I pay him a compliment and ask the audience to applaud him. They do. I then ask him to stand up so that everyone can see him. More applause. I then invited him up onto the stage and told him to pick a card. Here’s the “not not”.

He’s not not going to come up on to the stage.

Hold colleagues in unconditional positive regard AND practice radical candour.