Joe: Lewis, what's the most common advice given to a successful, stable business? Lewis: Easy. 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Keep doing what you're doing, milk that cash cow, and don't rock the boat. Joe: Exactly. And according to our book today, that is the single most dangerous piece of advice you could possibly follow. It's a direct path to failure. Lewis: Whoa, okay, fighting words. I like it. What book is this that's coming out swinging against conventional wisdom? Joe: This comes from "No-Excuses Innovation: Strategies for Small- and Medium-Sized Mature Enterprises" by Bruce A. Vojak and Walter B. Herbst. Lewis: No-Excuses Innovation. The title alone sounds like a challenge. Joe: It is. And these aren't just academics. Vojak and Herbst have spent their entire careers in the trenches of innovation. They wrote this specifically for the businesses everyone else ignores—the small, mature companies that are the backbone of the economy but are often told they're too small or too 'old' to innovate. Lewis: I can see that. Most innovation books are about flashy startups or tech giants with billion-dollar R&D budgets. A book for a 50-person manufacturing company in the Midwest feels... necessary. So why is 'if it ain't broke' such bad advice? Success feels good! Joe: It feels great! But the book argues that success breeds complacency. And as Intel's legendary CEO Andy Grove once said, "Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." Every business, no matter how successful, is on something called an S-curve. It grows, it hits a peak, and then, without intervention, it matures and declines. Lewis: Isn't that just a fancy way of saying businesses get old and die? It sounds inevitable. Joe: It feels inevitable, but it's not. The authors say mature companies face three choices: extend their maturity a little longer, exit the business, or renew. Most companies just try to extend, optimizing what they already do. But the ones that survive and thrive are the ones that choose to renew. And that requires a completely different way of thinking.

Lewis: Okay, but 'renewal' sounds expensive and risky. If I'm running a stable company, why would I risk it all on some new, unproven idea? Joe: Because the world will change whether you like it or not. The book uses a fantastic story to illustrate this, and it's not from the world of business, but from baseball. It's the 'Moneyball' story of the Oakland Athletics. Lewis: Oh, I love this. The Brad Pitt movie! How does a baseball team with no money relate to a medium-sized business? Joe: Perfectly. In the early 2000s, the Oakland A's were a classic SMME. They had a tiny budget compared to giants like the New York Yankees. They kept losing their star players to richer teams. By all conventional logic, they were doomed to fail. They were a mature 'business' in decline. Lewis: Right, they couldn't afford the home run hitters. They were stuck. Joe: Exactly. So their general manager, Billy Beane, had to innovate or die. He couldn't play the same game as the rich teams. He had to change the game itself. He partnered with a young economics grad, and they threw out a century of baseball wisdom—things like batting average and how a player looks. Lewis: The 'good face' metric. I remember that from the movie. They ignored all the traditional scouting metrics. Joe: They ignored them completely. Instead, they focused on one, deeply undervalued statistic: on-base percentage, or OBP. How often does a player, any player, get on base? They realized that getting on base is what leads to scoring runs, and scoring runs is what wins games. It didn't matter if it was a walk or a bloop single. Lewis: Hold on, so they were basically data nerds before it was cool. They ignored the flashy, expensive home run hitters for cheaper, less glamorous guys who just... get on base? That must have seemed insane to the old-school scouts. Joe: It was heresy! The book quotes Mike Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." The A's were getting punched in the mouth by the market every year. Their plan had to be different. They built a team of misfits and statistical oddities that no one else wanted, and in 2002, they went on a 20-game winning streak, an American League record. They out-innovated the giants with a fraction of the budget. Lewis: Wow. So the lesson for the SMME owner is to find their own 'on-base percentage'—the metric everyone else in their industry is ignoring but that actually predicts success? Joe: Precisely. It’s about challenging the sacred cows of your own industry. What are the expensive 'home run hitters' you think you need to compete? What if they don't matter as much as you think? What's the cheap, unglamorous 'walk' that could actually win you the game? That's the 'no-excuses' mindset. It's not about having more resources; it's about having more insight. Lewis: That's a powerful reframe. It shifts innovation from being about spending money to being about thinking differently. But how do you even start to find that hidden metric? It seems like you'd need a Billy Beane-level genius. Joe: You'd think so, but the book argues the tools are surprisingly accessible and human. And finding that hidden metric isn't about big data or expensive consultants. The book argues it's about a surprisingly simple tool: Design Thinking. It's about seeing the world through your customer's eyes.

Lewis: Design Thinking. I hear that term a lot. It sounds like something for artists or people at Apple designing the next iPhone, not for a company that makes, say, industrial valves. Joe: And that's the misconception the book wants to shatter. At its core, Design Thinking is just a process for solving problems that starts with empathy. It’s about deeply understanding the user's needs, even the ones they can't articulate themselves. To make it concrete, the book uses a brilliant, low-tech example: the evolution of the carrot peeler. Lewis: The carrot peeler? Okay, you have my attention. I'm picturing a very boring board meeting. Joe: (laughs) Stay with me. For a hundred years, the only way to peel a carrot was with a knife. It was slow, dangerous, and you wasted a lot of the carrot. Then, someone invented the safety peeler. That was an incremental innovation—a better version of the same solution. Most companies stop there. They just make their peeler a different color or a bit cheaper. Lewis: That's the 'extending maturity' you mentioned earlier. Milking the cow. Joe: Exactly. But then two breakthrough innovations happened. First, a man named Sam Farber, the founder of OXO, watched his wife, who had arthritis, struggle to grip a normal peeler. He felt her frustration. That empathy led him to create the iconic OXO Good Grips peeler with the big, soft, rubber handle. He wasn't just selling a peeler; he was selling comfort, ease, and dignity. That's emotional design. Lewis: I love that! He solved a human problem, not a technical one. The problem wasn't 'how to remove carrot skin faster,' it was 'how to make this task not painful.' Joe: You've got it. That's the empathetic leap. But the story gets even better. Around the same time, a California carrot farmer named Mike Yurosek was frustrated because so many of his carrots were misshapen and couldn't be sold. Instead of trying to invent a better peeler, he asked a different question. He used an industrial bean cutter to chop his ugly carrots into small, uniform, snackable pieces. He invented the 'baby carrot.' Lewis: Oh my god. He didn't improve the solution; he eliminated the problem entirely. You don't need a peeler if the carrot is already peeled! Joe: That is the ultimate form of innovation. He redefined the entire category. And it came from understanding a user need—convenience. People don't want to peel carrots; they want to eat carrots. Lewis: I love this! We're talking about world-changing innovation, and the example is... carrots. It proves you don't need to be building a rocket ship. It’s about finding a point of friction in someone's life and removing it. Joe: It's the same pattern everywhere. The book tells another quick story about a company called Slice. The founder, TJ Scimone, saw that standard box cutters with metal blades were incredibly dangerous. Workplace stats showed that 30% of injuries were lacerations. Lewis: I can believe that. I've definitely had a few close calls with those things. Joe: Right? Everyone just accepted it as a cost of doing business. But TJ used design thinking. He developed a box cutter with a ceramic blade that was safer to the touch but still cut through cardboard. He focused on the human at the end of the tool. He wasn't inventing a new way to open boxes, just a better, more human way. Lewis: So whether it's a baseball team, a carrot peeler, or a box cutter, the pattern is the same. Stop looking at your own product and start looking at your customer's actual problem. Joe: That's the heart of it. The book says design thinking requires curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to embrace ambiguity. You have to be willing to admit you don't know the answer and go find it by watching and listening to real people.

Lewis: So, bringing it all together, what's the one 'no-excuses' takeaway for a business owner listening right now who feels stuck, who feels like their industry is mature and there's nothing new to be done? Joe: It's that innovation isn't a department; it's a mindset. It starts with the 'Moneyball' courage to question your own success and the conventional wisdom of your industry. You have to be paranoid enough to believe that what made you successful yesterday will not keep you successful tomorrow. Lewis: That's the shift from 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' to 'if it ain't broke, you're not looking hard enough.' Joe: Exactly. And once you have that courage, it's powered by the 'carrot peeler' empathy to go find a real human problem to solve. The risk isn't in trying something new and failing. The book's entire argument, backed by guys who've seen it for decades, is that the real, existential risk is standing still, waiting for your industry's S-curve to punch you in the mouth. Lewis: That Mike Tyson quote again. It's brutal but true. So the first step isn't to hire a team of innovators or spend a million dollars on R&D. It's to just... ask a different question. Ask your customers what they secretly hate about your product or your entire industry. Joe: That's the first step. Go find the pain. Go find the friction. Don't ask them what new features they want. Ask them what part of their day sucks because of the way things are currently done. The answer to that question is where renewal begins. Lewis: I find that incredibly empowering. It makes innovation feel less like a lottery ticket and more like a craft that anyone can learn if they're willing to be humble and curious. Joe: That's the 'no-excuses' part. The tools are there. The methods are proven. The only thing stopping you is the belief that you can't, or shouldn't, change. And we'd love to hear from our listeners on this. What's one 'sacred cow' in your industry that you think needs to be challenged? Let us know on our socials. We're genuinely curious to see what you all come up with. Lewis: This is Aibrary, signing off.