Grassroots Innovation Using The Kickbox Process From Adobe S13 Ep16

Inside any size organization, getting everyone engaged on innovation can be daunting. Its not just as simple as saying that innovation is important. You need to show the organization how. At Adobe, Mark Randall reversed engineered his approach to grassroots innovation and structured into a process called Kickbox. He didn't stop there. He and Adobe decided to open source the Kickbox approach to grassroots innovation to help other organizations innovate.

During the interview, Mark and Phil discussed:

Grassroots Innovation

• Mark's work experience that led him to being at Adobe and heading up innovation.
• His experience in being an entrepreneur and how that prepared him for his role in innovation leadership.
• The difficulty in reverse engineering how someone innovates so they can teach others.
• Challenging large organizations to innovate.
• The challenge that resulted in the creation of Kickbox (hint: grassroots innovation).

Kickbox

• The overall structure of Kickbox
• What is in the Red Box?
  • The six step/level process
  • Pre-paid credit card with $1,000
  • Scorecards, frameworks and exercises to develop ideas
• The objective of the two-day workshop where participants are given their Red Box.
• How does someone "get" a Blue Box?
• What is in the Blue Box?

Impact on Adobe and Others

• What has been the impact from Kickbox on Adobe?
• What other organizations have used Kickbox and what has been the result? (e.g. Cisco, Caterpillar)
• What improvements and changes has been contributed back to the open source material for Kickbox?

 

About Mark Randall:

Mark’s serial entrepreneurial career conceiving, designing and marketing innovative technology spans nearly 20 years and three successful high-tech start-ups. As VP of Innovation at Adobe, Mark Randall is focused on infusing divergent thinking at the software giant.

Mark has fielded over a dozen award-winning products which combined have sold over a million units, generated over $100 million in sales and won two Emmy awards. As an innovator, Mark has a dozen U.S. patents, he’s been named to Digital Media Magazine’s “Digital Media 100″ and he is one of Streaming Magazine’s “50 Most Influential People.” Mark speaks & teaches frequently on entrepreneurship, innovation and strategy and has appeared on CNN, ABC, NBC and CNBC.