(2025-05-24) Chin Cases From The Heart Of Innovation

Cedric Chin: Cases from the Heart of Innovation. This week's Commoncog piece is members-only; next week's piece will be free. This week we're looking at three cases taken from the book, designed to hammer home the ideas of last week's summary.

We’re going to look at three cases today.

• Beating IBM with RAID — which demonstrates what a 'not not' looks like in practice, as well as what can be gained from a technological advantage. (Quite a lot, as it turns out, if your competitors are sleeping at the wheel).
• RoadSync: Hunting for Demand in the Logistics Business — which serves as a demonstration of the situation diagram method that is taught by Furst and Chanoff at Flashpoint.
• Getting Effective Team Dynamics into University Curriculums — which is, I think, the oddest case study from the book. Professor Mary Lynn Realff figures out a way to get students to study extra-curricular material on teamwork ... against their will.

All three cases demonstrate hunting for (or falling backwards into) and finding authentic demand. The synthesis essay points out certain ... things I'd like you to notice from each case.

Member Discussions

the Deliberate Innovation (Heart of Innovation) Case Studies thread, where I share a case study written by the authors of the book

We go through a number of companies and their not nots, and collectively come to a few conclusions. First, these are the limitations of the framework. Second, that the Flashpoint startups don't do DPIs as rigorously after the program (unless they want to launch something brand new). They use other demand/validation frameworks, which are easier

Third, that authentic demand isn't about invariants ... or "things everyone wants". Authentic demand is trickier than that — often, common sense / high ROI value propositions provoke total indifference.

Sam then comes in and points out that the vibe shift against Brian Chesky is notable. ("Chesky has lacked self awareness for awhile, as evidence by his founder mode talks, but its only at this launch that everyone is realising it"). This is more a comment on memetic vibe shifts in the SV-centred tech industry than anything else.

Then I argue that, I, uh believe Chesky is actually a pretty bad CEO, and that this is a pretty good example of how a good business can really cover up for the sins of a CEO (which is really the thing that matters).