Today’s guest is an innovation guru who has been around for many years. Jeff DeGraff, known as the “Dean of Innovation”, is a business professor at the University of Michigan and an author and thought leader on innovation. On today’s show, we will discuss social responsibility and Jeff’s new book, “The Creative Mindset”. 

Jeff’s Background

After graduating from grad school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jeff met a man who worked for someone who owned a twenty-million-dollar pizza company called Dominoes. He turned down a job offer from an Ivy League school to join the team. Five years later, they sold the company for five-billion-dollars to Mitt Romney. Not long after, Jeff was recruited to teach at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He didn’t want to teach MBA’s because he thought they were dull and drab, but that is why they wanted him there. 

Two Faces of Innovation

Innovation creates concave value, things that are presently manifesting, and convex value, issues that are long-term. These types have to be measured completely differently. People tend to think about innovation from the tangible side of it. In places like Iowa State, they have huge innovation impacts, but no one sees it because it is based on research influence, not tangible products. Consumers tend to see the end result. When it comes to a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S, many different startups and big pharmaceutical companies have been working and building off of old research to create one. Once a vaccine is made, then they have to figure out how to make billions of doses of it. It’s a lot more complicated than people think it is. Big innovation is composed of a lot of moving parts.  

The Creative Mindset

Jeff grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood and in an age where innovation was viewed as a social responsibility. There are a lot of creativity books out there nowadays that are what Jeff calls “new agey”. Jeff took what he thought was the real research on creativity and put it in layman’s terms for everyone to use. The book focuses on taking ordinary things and making them extraordinary. Jeff wants to re-install the old way of building things through developing learning and trying new things. He uses what he calls the six skills through the mnemonic device CREATE (Clarify, Replicate, Elaborate, Associate, Translate, and Evaluate). The book gives tools in a simplified form to somebody who is trying to grow and make something better. 

I got invited to do a keynote speech for Vail Resorts several years ago. I did a raise of hands asking how many people think of themselves as creative. I was shocked to see how many people didn’t raise their hands. People think it takes a special type of person to be creative, which is simply not true. We all have natural strengths that vary from person to person. The object is to recognize your strength, build on it, and find other people with different strengths. 

Advice for the Listeners

People refer to Jeff as the “Dean of Innovation”. When he went to work at Dominoes, people often threw the hard problems at him. When he got to the University of Michigan, he had some students that went on to be famous, so the name just ended up sticking. As far as advice goes, Jeff says that innovation happens from the outside in, like a bell curve. Its easier to change 20% of the company 80%, than changing 80% of the company 20%. Secondly, diversity your gene pool. All the people in Jeff’s labs are different than him. Thirdly, give as much as you can away to people. In doing this, you build your network and become a better human being and fulfill social responsibility. 

If you want to keep up to date with what Jeff DeGraff is doing, check out his website here. Check out Jeff’s LinkedIn here. Check out his new book on creativity here. 

About our Guest: Jeff Degraff

Jeff DeGraff is both an advisor to Fortune 500 companies and a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. His simultaneously creative and pragmatic approach to making innovation happen has led clients and colleagues to dub him the “Dean of Innovation.” He has written several books, including Leading Innovation, Innovation You, and The Innovation Code. Jeff’s thoughts on innovation are covered by Inc., Fortune, and Psychology Today. He has a regular segment on public radio called The Next Idea. He founded the Innovatrium, an innovation consulting firm focusing on creating innovation culture, capability, and community. He earned his nickname, the “Dean of Innovation,” while working as an executive for Domino’s Pizza in his youth, where he accelerated Domino’s growth from a regional success story to an international franchise phenomenon.