On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we talk about how change is changing, the IKEA effect on MVPs, and how AI is making companies more ambidextrous. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help innovation leaders navigate what's next. Each week we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to grow and thrive in a world of hyper uncertainty and accelerating change. Join me, Brian Ardinger, and Miles Zero’s, Robyn Bolton as we discuss the latest tools, tactics, and trends for creating innovations with impact.

Podcast Transcript with Brian Ardinger and Robyn Bolton

[00:00:30] Brian Ardinger: Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and my co-host Robyn Bolton is with me. Hello Robin. How are you?

[00:00:45] Robyn Bolton: Hello, Brian. I'm great. How are you?

[00:00:50] Brian Ardinger: I am doing well. We are in the middle of December.

[00:00:54] Robyn Bolton: And hard to believe that the year is, it's almost over.

[00:00:58] Brian Ardinger: Well, I'm ramping up for 2026. We've got a lot of stuff to talk about for the conference that we're going to be planning. Yes. We'll talk to you a little bit more about that, but let's just jump in. We've got some articles to discuss, some things that we've been seeing out there in the ether when it comes to innovation.

Innovation and AI in 2026. Setting the Stage for Change

The first article is Change is Changing How to Meet the Challenge of Radical Reinvention, published by McKinsey. There's a lot of things I want to dive into this. Obviously, McKinsey's probably in the wheelhouse of disruption, as their game is going to be changed. So, I read this article with two lenses.

One, the lens of what they are telling their clients, and then two, are they eating their own dog food when it comes to this? So, for reference, the McKinsey article talks about, you know, when change becomes everywhere, every, everything everywhere, all at once. How are companies dealing with this? And it's no wonder that the average employee experiences all these particular changes and is worn out.

And I think one of the things they quoted was the number of new experiences that the average employee faces is fivefold increase than a decade ago. The fact that organizations and leaders have all new types of tools and skills and methods to navigate this changing, complex state, and those old tools don't necessarily apply today. So I love your first insight, and we'll go from there.

Radical Reinvention and Innovation Strategy. Rethinking Change at Scale

[00:02:13] Robyn Bolton: McKinsey turns out great stuff and great frameworks and all that stuff. And also, as someone who's been a consultant for entirely too long, they also make me laugh. Like in a super nerdy consultant way. Because one of the things that's laid out this article is the four Cs of change.

You know, it starts with C1 execute, C2 mobilize, and then we get to C3 transform, which was the buzzword of, I feel like the last five years. You know, we're transforming everything. But now we have a new one. It is level four change, and it is reinvention. And I just loved when we rebrand things that are the same thing we've always talked about, but we've rebranded it, and now there's a different diagram, so it's completely new, and you need to buy from us.

But there is good content in here. And you know this idea of creating value with the new identity. Talk about way easier said than done. Like every organization has an identity. When you ask someone like, what do we do here? The answer is the organization's identity and to change that is about as easy as changing an individual's identity, which is to say not at all.

Organizational Identity, Leadership, and Innovation Fatigue in the Age of AI

[00:03:30] Brian Ardinger: Well, and I found that part of the article actually the most intriguing because I think when you think of McKinsey, again, a lot of stuff they've focused on is how do you optimize and execute on your model? They're not very focused on reinvention. And kind of blowing it up and starting over from that perspective.

So, I thought that was an interesting take, that either they have to recognize the fact that the companies that they're working with and the companies out there in general are going to have to reinvent themselves. It's no longer table stakes just to, you know, do what you've been doing and make it better, faster, stronger, cheaper.

It's how do we navigate and potentially reinvent what we've done in the past. And then the other key aspect of it that really resonated with me was the fact that how do you create a culture such that change is not a drain to the organization? But as a source of energy, again, coming from a consulting background, that's often not the things you talk about.

Like how do you actually create change that energizes and excites people, and provides a source of energy around what you're doing? So those are the two things that stuck out in my mind when it comes to this, and I'm seeing it in the companies that I talk to. I think there is this conversation going on, like, we don't know how to do this. We know we have to do this, but the guardrails and the tools that we've used, we just are starting from scratch in a lot of ways.

Culture, Participation, and Human-Centered Innovation Beyond Top-Down Change

[00:04:44] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and what made me kind of laugh is that a lot of the advice in this article, you know, you read it and McKinsey's talking about you have to put identity shifts at the center of the change.

You need to see new possibilities and let go of the past. And yet the article, when it gets into recommendations, is all about the leaders at the top. And you talk about how do you help people get through change? How do you use change to even energize people? And when change is thrust upon you, you're going to get exhausted.

And so, the whole mechanism for change, for reinvention, I think personally, is you have to involve people in it. So that it's not being thrust upon them, which is a very, very different approach than the typical hierarchical top-down where McKinsey and a lot of other firms thrive. So, I'm very interested to see how this works.

[00:05:40] Brian Ardinger: The last thing that I want to throw about this is, again, when you talk about reinvention, a lot of it comes down to understanding your customers and that. And it'll be interesting to see what McKinsey customers and clients want from the next change reinvention of what consulting is. What are the expectations, and I think that alone will be some interesting articles and things that come out in the future of what does it mean to have a consultant look at your stuff, and help you along that path.

What are the things that the customer actually demands and needs when a lot of the tools are now easily accessible by the people that were paying millions of dollars before to have that delivered to them. 

[00:06:14] Robyn Bolton: The cobbler's children have no shoes, is a popular phrase for very good reasons, so we shall see.

MVPs, Innovation Bias, and the IKEA Effect in Product Development

[00:06:21] Brian Ardinger: Excellent. All right, well, second article on our list is the IKEA Effect, why Your MVP Isn't Landing. And this is from David Bland. Folks who have followed the podcast know David. He's been out at the summit before. He's written a book called Testing Business Ideas. He's one of the godfathers when it comes to Lean Startup and some of this kind of stuff, and he has a nice article in his Precoil blog talking about, have you ever been excited about showing your MVP to a customer only to have them seem puzzled as why you're excited about it.

He says, welcome to the IKEA effect. And the IKEA effect as he defines it, is when you overvalue your MVP simply because you are the one who built it. And how many times have we fallen into that trap when you know that creaky old IKEA bookshelf that you built, it looks great to you, and somebody comes in and says, that's not the best of things that you've done in the past. So, I thought it was an interesting take on a way to think about your MVP and not get enamored with the fact that you have built it. 

[00:07:18] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, this article is great, but for the photo alone, I encouraged all the listeners to go look on it because the hugging of the totally misassembled bookshelf, like it's just a very funny photo. But it's a very real effect. I mean, like you said, we've all put together things that people are kind of like, what is that? I remember taking a pottery class in college, and I was so proud of this pot that I made and designed and that like my professor thought was incredible.

So he taught me a special technique and I brought it home and my roommate is like, put that in the closet. That thing is hideous. It's another articulation of why you need to fall in love with the problem and not the solution because when you fall in love with the solution, whether it's an idea, and certainly if it's something you've made, problems.

Evidence-Driven Innovation. How AI and Lean Thinking Improve MVP Learning

[00:08:09] Brian Ardinger: And in the article he talks a couple of simple ways to kind of combat the IKEA effect. One of it is, first of all, naming it early, you know? Actually, as you're building out your MVP talk openly about the fact that we are building something that people may not like and that. And once everyone is aware of the fact that there may be an IKEA effect of love, because we're the ones building it.

That at least levels the game. And you know what you're going for when you first come out of the gate with your MVP. The second tip he says is, you know, separate the building from the believing and make it a rule that you are allowed to build anything, but do not believe anything without customer evidence against that.

So again, letting the customer decide if the baby's ugly versus you. And then the third tip is have an assumption behind your MVP. So, frame your MVP as a way to gather evidence rather than the be-all, end-all, and not to validate how much you love what you've built, but to gather evidence. So, it's a tool for gathering evidence and speed up the learning through that.

[00:09:05] Robyn Bolton: Yeah, and I, that third one I love the most because it completely shifts the role of the MVP in your mind from, look at what I built to this is a means to an end.

AI and Corporate Innovation. Exploitation vs Exploration

[00:09:17] Brian Ardinger: Yeah, it can make it more objective. It's like, it's not, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out what's the right path you can tell me because I'm not tied into exactly what I built.

All right. The third article is from Dev Discourse and the title of the article is AI Reshapes Corporate Innovation Boosts both Exploitative and Exploratory Performance. So, this is a great report looking at AI and how firms work. Applying AI to look at both exploitative innovation. In other words, how are we making things more efficient and executing on our existing stuff, as well as using AI to look for more exploratory types of techniques? And innovation helps these firms do both. Apparently, the AI, at least the research that they've proposed, is it actually allows companies to have an impact in both of those types of innovations.

Can AI Drive Breakthrough Innovation or Just Optimize What Exists

[00:10:08] Robyn Bolton: It was very interesting because the, as they call it, the exploitive innovation, which is a terrible phrase, but you know, the core innovation of making things better, faster, cheaper, and maybe even some adjacent innovation, that is I think where AI thrives and where we see it thriving and being used in sprints and in companies.

What surprised me a bit about this article was when it talked about the exploratory innovation and some of that radical, destructive breakthrough. And how the article talks about that the AI's ability to process complex data and reveal new patterns is really great. Whereas I've seen other research that says that actually AI is terrible at making, you know, non-obvious connections just because of what AI does.

AI's essentially like a big regression model. So, reading further down, it looks like it's most beneficial and exploratory innovation of summarizing all the market research you do, pulling out synthesis from customer insights. But I'm not sold on the fact that AI is going to create the next new big thing. 

[00:11:17] Brian Ardinger: I think one of the interesting things about that, and it'd be interesting to see more research that comes out as we study more about it, but I'm wondering if it allows the existing companies who are typically pretty good at executing on what they're currently doing and optimization and things along those lines.

If AI gives the benefit not to the answer of what that new exploratory thing is, but more from the standpoint of like, most of those companies don't ever live in that world, and so just by even having a chance to live in that world, even if it's not necessarily fake but hallucinated or just different, it allows them to explore with greater ease, time, efficiency, et cetera, where they maybe haven't done that in the past.

And so, it'll be interesting to see again how AI can maybe move folks who are traditionally focused on that execution model to at least being aware of what happens when you start doing the exploration and hopefully be able to learn how to navigate that world as well.

Innovation Ecosystems and Learning from Startups. Why Exploration Matters

[00:12:12] Robyn Bolton: That's an interesting point because maybe the suggestion from AI, maybe gives a little bit of a sense of safety of like, oh, AI recommended this, so it must be based on something. And you know, with that slight sense of safety, maybe people do start stepping out of their comfort zones a little bit. So, it's a great point.

The Future of Innovation and AI Collaboration. Introducing IO2026

[00:12:31] Brian Ardinger: It's something that we see and one of the reasons like we invest in startups is because we get to see that exploration firsthand, and we can take some of those nuggets and then bring it back into the core.

We've been doing it for over a decade, and so that's one of the underlying hidden benefits that we've seen because it just gives us kind of a lens into that world that we're not typically spending time in.

Excellent. Well, we're on the final stretch of 2025. We officially launched the IO2026 Summit. I'll let folks know that early-bird tickets are now available, and you can go to IO2026.com to take a look.

But I want to call a shout out to, one of the things that we are adding to this conference this year is the IO 2026 Gallery of Innovation. We're going to be putting together a virtual showcase of startups, side hustles, prototypes, corporate innovation projects, any type of initiative that's doing something new and exciting. You now have an opportunity to go to the website and hit apply and put your information in as far as what you're building and give you an opportunity to showcase some of the interesting things that are going on in our world.

Showcasing Innovation in Action. The IO2026 Gallery of Innovation

We'll be giving away 30 free tickets to folks that are part of the gallery innovation, and then we're going to actually ask 15 of those submissions to come on stage and present live five-minute presentation of what they're building, what they've learned. Give people real insights into that. So that's something new about the conference. So, not only grab a ticket to come see this, but if you are in the process of building something, go there and apply for the Gallery of Innovation, and hopefully, we'll see you there. 

[00:14:04] Robyn Bolton: Well, I am going to plus one that for my tip. Because as we were talking about AI and exploratory innovation, if you want to be wild and crazy and do, you know, exploratory stuff with humans. Definitely come check out IO 2026 Gallery of Innovation. The people that attend the event are awesome. The ideas that are shared at the event are awesome. Just the whole experience is absolutely fantastic.

Innovation, AI, and What Comes Next. Closing Reflections for 2026

[00:14:29] Brian Ardinger: And we're looking forward to it. That's a wrap for 2025. We're going to be taking a couple weeks off, so happy holidays to everybody. Happy New Year, and we'll see you in 2026. Thanks for coming out in 2026.

[00:14:45] Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. Today's episode was produced and engineered by Susan Stibal. If you want to learn more about our teams, our content, our services, check out insideoutside.io or if you want to connect with Robyn Bolton, go to MileZero.io, and until next time, go out and innovate.