Michael Morand: welcome to Team Chemistry. I'm Mike Morand. This podcast is about the real science behind how teams work. Not the motivational poster version, but what actually happens when you put people together and ask them to do something hard. My guest today is Steve Weinstein. Steva spent more than 30 years leading supply chain and marketing teams inside large consumer product companies with more than half of that time at Johnson and Johnson in some of its most innovative business units. He ran Global Supply Chain for the Baby and Beauty franchises and led supply chain for Zarabi's Naturals while it was J and J's fastest growing division at more than 35% year over year. Before that, he served as director of new ventures and innovation sourcing and then director of global innovation sourcing. I love that. He served as chairman for F4SS, the Foundation for Strategic Sourcing, a nonprofit consortium for CPG companies to collaborate on industry standards. And he's now CEO at Bee Cure, leading the effort to bring a new standard of wound care to the market. I met Steve during my first week at JJ. He was the first consistent mentor I've had in my career. And 15 years later, it's difficult, maybe impossible. To measure how much I've learned from his guidance and his example. So, Steve, welcome to Team Chemistry. Steve Weinstein: Mike, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. And I'm thrilled for our fifteen years, and we look forward to another fifteen. Michael Morand: Here's to that. Alright, so today we're going to talk about innovation, but not the version that dominates the cultural script. And Steve's career has been built on a premise that runs almost completely counter to that: that the breakthrough rarely lives where the credit eventually lands, but that the actual work of innovation is engineering the conditions for the right relationships to form between teams that don't normally talk to each other. That's a thread I want to spend the next ⁓ of time here pulling on. So so if innovation actually lives between teams, you know, that creates a hard question for any organization investing in it. You know, most large spend enormous amounts of money on innovation with labs and accelerators and partnership programs, internal venture funds, supplier summits, you name it. And some of it produces real product and a lot of it just produces meetings, you know. From the outside the two can look almost identical for a long time and the leaders running them tend to make broadly similar claims. But from the inside they don't look the same at all. ⁓ and you've worked across both, Steve. So, you know, what would you say you know, what's the difference between an innovation system that produces something and one that mostly performs the rituals of producing something? Steve, here's where I'd like to start. The standard culture script about innovation puts a single name above the title: Edison and the Light Bulb, Ford and the Assembly Line, Jobs and the iPhone. But most of your career has been spent in roles that exist because somebody realized the script doesn't actually describe how innovation happens. New venture sourcing, innovation sourcing, supplier-enabled innovation. These are jobs built to engineer conditions, not to celebrate individuals. So Steve Weinstein: Yeah, so I'll I'll go back to sports analogies. Michael Morand: I was wondering, could you walk me through a specific innovation you watched come together where the breakthrough wasn't where anyone would have expected and the actual team configuration that produced it wasn't one you would draw on a whiteboard. You know, what was it about how that team came together made it work? Steve Weinstein: Yeah, sure, Mike. So ⁓ by the way, most people look at innovation ⁓ a new product, right, coming to market. But there are many innovations ⁓ actually have nothing to do with products. They're process innovations, they're business model innovations as well. ⁓ start with a product innovation just because I think it's an easier example to talk through, but we can touch on those later if if desired. So think of innovation like a relay race. ⁓ somebody comes up with the idea to start. Usually marketing could be sales on the commercial front or on the RD engineering technical front, somebody has found a breakthrough and they have to come up with a reason for that in the marketplace. But one of those two groups usually is starting this race. And then I called it a supply chain where I spent most of my time on the innovation side. Any great basketball team, baseball team, right? Any team, it it it's it's the key, I think, mindset. So ⁓ we used a mindset called Flawless Project Execution, FPX, and the mindset was you're all on a bus and they lock the doors. The only way you get off that bus is if you leave the company. We're the second runners in the relay race because no great idea ever makes it to market. It is great execution that makes it to market. So there's a front end of innovation and a back end of innovation. And there are many groups in this relay race who bring it all the way. ⁓ So there were groups in the third leg of this relay race, fourth leg of the relay race to bring it to launch and get it to the consumer. Services have their own innovations as well, but we'll talk products today, just because that's where I did a lot of stuff. So ⁓ one that I'm probably the most proud of. Otherwise, you're on that bus and that bus only matters if it makes it across the finish line. if somebody on that bus is struggling, but you're good, You need to help them to make sure that they're not struggling, right? ⁓ anymore. ⁓ an analogy I've used over the years is the chef on the Titanic was ⁓ awesome. Michael Morand: How do you find that suggestions? ⁓ Steve Weinstein: it is one that is still on the market today after about ten years. ⁓ it is a ⁓ beauty wipe that is individually wrapped. And marketing came up with this idea. It was to address the number one issue with beauty wipes at the time, probably still is number one today, which is if you get them in a pack, usually they come in a pack of seven, fourteen, forty, whatever. Well, every time you open the pack, air gets in, which means that that wipe dries out and the stack of wipes dry out. So they're not easy to carry around, but also they dry out quickly. So marketing came up with an idea. Michael Morand: Mm. Steve Weinstein: But it ⁓ but it didn't help save the ship, right? And And that's the thing is do you want to win the championship or do you want to locally optimize your cred in the media, in your salary, whatever? ⁓ that's what it's about in an innovation standpoint. So the idea can be great. If the execution stinks, doesn't help. If the financials don't work, it doesn't help. If the supplier relationship isn't trusted, Michael Morand: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Okay. Steve Weinstein: That said, what if we could individually wrap them, keep them fresher, and allow people to more easily take them on the go when they need them? This idea tested amazingly well. And they're not gonna prioritize you because a hundred things will go wrong in innovation. It's how do you overcome it? How do you get it down the line? And think about it this way: somebody is funding your work on that innovation. How do you keep their trust? Usually it's leadership, sometimes it's a truly financial institution, but how do you keep their trust all along the way so that they keep believing and helping you? They came to us and said, Can we execute this? And we said, Yes. In market already today, there are plenty of wipes that are folded, almost like the ones you get at a restaurant if you're eating ribs that you just open up and then you can use. And they said, Not good, not cool. We want it to look like a mini version of the stack of wipes. This happened to be for Neutrogena, which ⁓ wipes were a big business for them. get to the final to the final steps. And then it's the consumer at the end of the day. Because they have a choice. They may think it really did help solve their problem. Well, we asked around, and no one around the world actually made a little wipe that would be rolled, folded, and wet in a little pouch to act as a mini me ⁓ version. So we went and backed and said, look, we can do this, let's just get it to market quickly, let's test it, whatever. They said no again. So Right, in a in a good way, or or it did not. We then had to go and start over again. And ⁓ in Europe, we found a supplier ⁓ named Dr. Schumacher, great supplier of wipes. They said, we can build the equipment, it will cost eight million dollars. And are you willing to make that commitment? Because if it fails, you have to pay us back. We're not going to be out any money. So a lot of when we talk innovation, it's about sharing risk, it's about sharing reward as part of this. The manufacturer ⁓ went on their way. And through again different twists and turns, it took about almost two years to launch this product because it really was new to the world. It doesn't seem it when you look at it, but no one had done this before. Michael Morand: thank you. I I think really interesting example. You know, I think about ⁓ you know, another part of this, ⁓ you know, there's a thread from organizational that I think also, you know, maybe helps to tell the real thing from theater. ⁓ And is a researcher, ⁓ Charlotte Nemeth at Berkeley, who spent decades studying the role dissent ⁓ in different groups. ⁓ And her core finding is counterintuitive that authentic dissent Steve Weinstein: not only the consumer idea, but it's also then the proposition financially to the consumer and internally. You have to get approval. That's part of the relay race. So many innovations don't ever make it to market because they fall on one of these. So marketing will be the Edison of this light bulb. They came up with the idea. It was a wow idea. They're gonna get the credit and they're the media darlings. But this could never have happened ⁓ Michael Morand: even when the dissenter is wrong produces measurably more creative and better reason decisions than consensus does. And, you know, critically the dissent has to be real. The devil's advocate doesn't work. Because Yep. Steve Weinstein: Supply chain procurement could not execute this idea if financially we couldn't make the whole proposition work, and at the end of the day, if the consumers didn't like it. So, anyway, that that truly is if you view it as a team sport rather than an individual. I'll use the analogy. Michael Jordan did not win the NBA championship in his first few years. Why? He didn't have a good enough supporting cast. No great star does it, right? It is the Ha ha ha. ⁓ Michael Morand: You know, people detect the performance and discount it. So one read on Innovation Theater is that it's very good at performing descent without ever tolerating the real thing. And and I'm wondering, Steve, you know, does that ring true to to what you've seen and what you've experienced? Steve Weinstein: So I'll s I'll say most of the time, Mike, it it is true. and I think it so much of innovation, ⁓ it's kinda like the movie the movies, right? What you see on the movie sounds and looks really good, but it really wasn't the way it happened. You know, ⁓ but for theater it works very very well. So in innovation a lot of times is a gr is a grind. ⁓ team that always wins. So ⁓ that any any example, I have yet to see an example where one individual made it all happen. Takes a village. Michael Morand: Yeah, no, thank you, Steve. I love that. Steve Weinstein: a a and actually the dissent the reason I really believe the dissent helps ⁓ ⁓ the diversity of thought really helps. So I was just in a meeting yesterday. We're launching three new products ⁓ next year is our plan for B cure ⁓ to expand from where we're at in just the radiation and recovery space to cover ⁓ eczema and dry skin, to ⁓ burns that are acute, minor. Or cuts, burns, and scrapes, and also make the products into an OTC level product, which is a different regulatory class than where we are today, that's just homeopathic and cosmetic. Well, our head of marketing actually said: how can we take the same formula and put it in two different areas? What's the differentiation? And it kind of dis derailed a part of the meeting, but it actually led to a great discussion that said, okay, what's the priority at the end of the day? If the priority is it that we need two different products, no, that's not the priority. The priority is how do we present it to the consumer so it's easy to understand and they can pick it for their need when they have the issue. And maybe it'll be one formula, one product, two sizes. To create two different SKUs. It may wind up being that one is an FSA-HSA eligible version and another one is not. Right? ⁓ We'll see where it goes. But her willingness to dissent. Is actually getting us to a better place. Because if we spend all the money and all the time to put out a product and it doesn't do well, did we win? Like, did we win that race? No, no, we did not. Because and I don't know if you know this statistic, but ⁓ I'll ask you roughly how many products that are put into market in the consumer product space are still there on shelf three years later? Michael Morand: No makes a lot of sense. ⁓ you know, some of you're explaining before about kind of the different functional contributions, how you kind of ⁓ you know, the recombinations different efforts, you know, makes me think of this ⁓ study that I came ⁓ back in two thousand one, ⁓ finding from Lee Fleming and his colleagues at Berkeley, they were studying patent data. And they found that the most consequential innovations were disproportionately recombinations of knowledge from different domains. So not not kind of a breakthrough idea from inside one field, but the combination of two or three things that that hadn't been brought together before quite the same way. And what I kind of took from this is that innovation shouldn't be limited to any one team's functional expertise. And we we must also think about the strength and quality of the connections between teams to make these kinds of things possible. I'm gonna guess fifty percent. Steve Weinstein: Yeah. it's about a third only. So about two-thirds of the products that launch do not live for three years. And why? Because something happened. ⁓ the consumer decided it wasn't worth it, right? And they chose something else. The sales weren't good enough, the retailers kicked them off, ⁓ they didn't spend enough money to support it, whatever the the reasons were. Michael Morand: ⁓ Steve Weinstein: So companies spend so much money, millions of dollars, to put products out and two thirds of them are not there three years from now. It that's not a good hit rate. That's not a success story. So you do all the things that you think are the right things to do, but I'd argue I call it collisions. and almost like music, right? They say there's really no new music. ⁓ It just people have figured out how to apply different sounds together. similar thing in ⁓ it is people seeing something that others didn't see. And I think the finding ⁓ from the professor is is really good. If you challenge more up front, you tend to get a better outcome on the on the back end. So kind of go slow to go fast, right? ⁓ is I think is totally very relevant in this space. Right, and then figuring out how to actually put that together just as you said from the research. The best innovation is really not it being new, it's about it solving problem that people have. Michael Morand: Mm-hmm. I like that. Awesome. Great. Well, you know, and I you know, I think some of what you're describing too, you know, I I think that there's a a distinction that I find helpful and again this is kind of a poll from the study of complex systems, and that's the difference between systems that are merely complicated and systems that are genuinely complex. You know, and complicated systems have many parts, but the behavior is predictable from the parts. You know, and complex systems have emergent behavior, you can't predict from the parts alone. You know, it strikes me that most corporate innovation programs are designed as if the work were complicated. You know, it's controllable through the process. Steve Weinstein: No. Michael Morand: You know, and the ones that produce real product ⁓ treat the work as complex, you know, managing conditions and and not outcomes. And you know, so I think there's a question that I think a lot of senior leaders never fully answer for themselves and that is what they're actually supposed to do when the innovation requires the work between teams and not just inside of one. You know, the standard playbook tells leaders to set vision, allocate resources, remove obstacles. You know, the work you did over decades was something different, you know, closer to engineering conditions where the right relationships between people and teams could form. So How do you think about a leader's contribution in those moments? And what's the version of that answer you wish someone had given you from the start? Steve Weinstein: Great question. So I found that most leaders love this we called it the shiny object. Some people call it the shiny penny. They get attracted Right, to the what they get attracted to the idea that's out there, ⁓ and certainly the opportunity that that's out there. What they're most leaders are not attracted to is that grind is the back and forth and all the ups and downs and the roller coaster. that that derails ⁓ a leader. And to your point, mo most leaders I found, you know, if you're gonna be hands-off. You you want the movie version of the story. You don't want the book version with all those with all those details. so to me, what a leader can do ⁓ best is to actually create an environment where the teams can successfully dissent, where they can work through the issues, where there is time pressure because sometimes you miss an innovation because people get to it faster and then you're second, third, fourth in the marketplace. So it's not that, ⁓ give them free reign. This isn't getting your kids, you know, free reign. You set guide rails, you set guardrails, you set expectations. But to support is very much, I I had an old boss who somebody said, if it's if the scorecard is green, it's our scorecard. If the scorecard is red, it's yours. So, you know, you can't have a leader who doesn't want to take accountability when things are bad, right? That that doesn't work in innovation. I I led a program that that at J and J that was, I thought, a terrific program within procurement. It was called supplier enabled innovation. And the head of procurement of all J and J started this and he said, look, we beat up our suppliers and get a large amount of cost savings every year to help the business. I believe we can get even more benefit if we actually don't focus on cost, but focus on growth. Because growth encompasses top line and bottom line. Whereas cost tends to focus only on the bottom line. And we pick up their expertise because they're going to give their expertise to some customers. It just may not be us at the end of the day. The tagline that we developed for supplier-enabled innovation is together we're more. And that is the mindset that I have just lived by over the years that many people don't. ⁓ and I think that's just been a differentiator. So You're together between the members of the relay race team, internally and externally, because as I said, so much of what a leader can help do. Jorge Mosquita, who was our leader for those ⁓ wipes ⁓ pods, he approved the eight million dollar investment. That was a big investment. If he didn't do that, there was no pods that would happen. Right? Leaders make critical decisions to free up the team. Red Red Arabak, the famous coach of the Boston Celtics. Michael Morand: Yeah. Steve Weinstein: People said, you guys seem to have the luck of the Irish and you're always getting lucky. He said, the harder we practice, the luckier we get. So to your point about complex, complex can mean that it's not easy to do and there's a lot of steps to do it. But if you know what they are and you follow that process and those rules, it tends to be pretty easy because you know and you can expect those outcomes. It just takes a lot of work to do it. But you can it's it's more understandable to the team that I do this, I should see this, if I don't, then what action do I take, right? It's a lot of if then statements basically. Yeah. Michael Morand: Yeah. No, I love that. And and I I'm especially drawn to the comment you made. I I've never heard anyone say this before, but kind of to describe or to to delineate something between the movie version and the book version. I just thought that was a really great way to kind of think about at what level of detail and how realistic is kind of the picture we're painting in our own minds or in practice. You know, and speaking of the book version, You know, another kind of insight from a book. ⁓ one of one of my many favorite authors, ⁓ Linda Hill at Harvard, she wrote this book called Collective Genius. ⁓ And based on a multi year study of innovation leaders at companies like Pixar and Google and Pfizer. And her central finding is one I think you'll recognize, and it's that leaders of the most consistently innovative teams don't see their job as having the big idea or directing their work, they see it as creating the context in which other people's ideas could collide and combine. You know, less visionary, more architect of conditions. And and I'm kind of that that to me echoes of kind of some of the comments that that you just ⁓ that you just ⁓ you know experience you described. Steve Weinstein: Yeah. Wow. She she yeah, she she nailed it. you know, th think of any great coach, right? It's the little adjustments that they make. Because in s so often any sport, teams are not winning in a landslide. That that's a rarity. It's one score, right? It's one basket. It it's one play with two minutes left to go in the game. Pro preparing your teams for that is so critical. I I view my job at B Cure. I mean, we're a small company, there's generally five of us who are running, call it the day-to-day, and then we bring in all the other members of the team ⁓ to help us do things. And mu much of the team is not we're asset light. They're not employees of the company. What you say no to is just as critical as what you say yes to to make the innovation happen. Michael Morand: Incredible. Incredible. Thank you. So Steve's last question before the lightning round, and I I want to ask this to every guest on Team Chemistry. So if you think about a team you were part of where something happened that broke an assumption you were caring about how teams work. Maybe it shouldn't have worked, but it did. Maybe it fell apart in a way you didn't see coming. What was the experience and what did it break? Steve Weinstein: A team will beat an individual almost every time. So, number one rule, I'll say Mike, to break is vulnerability. Brene Brown ⁓ is ⁓ a right? If you don't put it out there, it usually won't happen. you have to be willing to put it out there. And in innovation where things occur, again, those collisions, it's all about putting it out there and seeing what can happen. ⁓ So ⁓ Don't sit in the stands and be a cynic, as Teddy Roosevelt said. Be in the arena, right? You have to be willing to play the game. The ups, the downs, the good, the bad. If you're not willing to put yourself out there, it will not happen for you. So break that rule, right? Because it's gonna happen. People are gonna challenge it, and you gotta keep breaking it every every time. Third rule is basically you don't always win. But Michael Morand: ⁓ yeah. Steve Weinstein: When you sometimes lose, you wind up winning. Right? But too often, and sure you face this as well, in jobs, you're not the number one candidate, right? I've had jobs where I did not get that job, but I did well enough so that the next time there was an opening, they thought of me. And that's what you want for your innovation because you're gonna compete, as I said. Think of it like a bank, even if you're within a company, the leadership has the money and they put it towards certain things. Well, your innovation maybe didn't work this time, but if you ran it in a way that was well received, if you showed that the teams could work together, if there was learnings that came from that innovation, Google famous for not penalizing teams that failed, what'd they do? They took the learnings and they applied it to the next innovation. That's what you want to have happen. So every time you lose you're one step closer to winning every time you get a no from an investor from a customer whatever you've tried to figure out what made it the no and how do you get to the yes innovation the same way. When something didn't work how do we twist it and put it out in a different way? That's what it's all about. Michael Morand: That's amazing. That's amazing. Thank you. So for the last kind of bit here, if you're if you're game, ⁓ you know, so lightning round. All right, lightning rounds. So all right, here's here's a few sentences. I'm ⁓ I'm gonna ask if you can finish this sentence for me. So the best team I ever worked on had Steve Weinstein: ⁓ this this is great. I'm gay. I don't even know what it is, but I'm gay. If it's you if you're involved, I'm gay. Okay. Grit, fun, and a tremendous passion for winning. Michael Morand: that. Alright, a team is in trouble the moment it stops. Steve Weinstein: Talking, trusting, believing. Michael Morand: The fastest way to break a team's trust is Steve Weinstein: Don't reward the right behaviors. Or said another way, reward the wrong behaviors that will break it. Michael Morand: Most underrated trait on a team is Steve Weinstein: Love of the other teammates. Michael Morand: And you can tell a team is working when Steve Weinstein: when they ⁓ are driving ⁓ the decisions, the actions ⁓ to leadership saying is needed, ⁓ not the other way. Michael Morand: Amazing. Alright, so the the last kind of little bit here, ⁓ a few hot takes and looking for one line from you. So there's no I in team. Is that wisdom or cliche? Steve Weinstein: Okay. Cliche. You need I because you have to care about yourself, like any relationship. If it doesn't work for you, it can't work for the team. But the bigger goal is no I. Michael Morand: Yeah, absolutely. So last one. Most meetings make a team worse. True or false? Steve Weinstein: True if they don't all need to be there. false if you actually accomplish what's needed and it's you're done. Great meeting has that purpose. Move on. Michael Morand: Amazing. Steve, thank you. This was exactly the conversation I was hoping to have. Thank you so much for for joining today. Steve Weinstein: ⁓ awesome, Mike. Love love it. Would love to keep ⁓ talking with you. And ⁓ again, you're doing some amazing stuff. You've taken a huge leap ⁓ of faith in yourself, ⁓ in in your abilities and in the need for this in the marketplace. There are so many companies, people who need to build up this skill set. So I really appreciate you being willing to be out there and in the arena and helping helping others. It's what it's all about. Michael Morand: Thank you so much. All right, that's a wrap for this episode of Team Chemistry. If this conversation made you look at innovation your own organization differently, that's exactly the point. Thanks for listening.