TADDY HALL
Global Authority on Innovation, Marketing & Growth Strategy; Senior Partner, Lippincott; Co-Author with Clay Christensen, “Competing Against Luck”
Taddy Hall - Profile
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Better innovation outcomes are a matter of choice. Contrary to popular belief, successful innovation has a causal mechanism that can be applied to make outcomes much more predictable. New products succeed by enabling desired progress and valued experiences in customers’ lives – not through differentiation or new technology, says Taddy Hall. He helps business leaders and entrepreneurs around the world develop new products and design their innovation processes accordingly.
Hall, who is a senior partner at Lippincott, a global creative agency, assists senior executives in improving innovation outcomes and driving growth, working closely with them on new product development initiatives, as well as on systematic improvements to their innovation processes. Formerly, he was a principal at the growth strategy consultancy, The Cambridge Group (part of The Nielsen Company) where he focused on helping clients meet top priority goals for growth, profitability and innovation. Primary author of the annual (2012-2016) “U.S. Nielsen Breakthrough Innovation Reports,” Hall also headed the company’s Breakthrough Innovation Project and led its global expansion. For 15 years, Hall has collaborated with Harvard Business School Professor and global innovation authority Clayton M. Christensen on the publication of “The Innovator’s Solution” (Harvard Business Review Press, 2003) and “Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure” (Harvard Business Review, 2005). Their latest endeavor (co-authored with Karen Dillon and David Duncan) digs deep into the science of innovation and Professor Christensen’s influential Jobs to be Done theory. “Competing Against Luck” (Harper Collins) was published October 2016. Especially knowledgeable in and passionate about innovation in emerging markets, Hall partnered with Professor Christensen and Ann Christensen to co-found Innovation Without Borders™, which delivers their unique innovation tools and frameworks to senior executives and entrepreneurs in rising regions of the world, including such countries as Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines. Since 1997, Hall also actively advises a network of 1000+ emerging market chief executives build profitable growth companies through the Endeavor organization. An engaging advisor, speaker and writer, Hall has published articles on innovation in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, Huffington Post, Time, Business Insider, Chief Executive and CMO magazine. He also co-authored “The Online Advertising Playbook,” published by Wiley in 2007. Prior to joining Nielsen, Hall served as chief operating officer at Meteor Solutions, a leading social media analytics and marketing company. From 2003-2008, he was chief strategy officer for the Advertising Research Foundation, where he leveraged deep expertise in media, digital technologies and research methodologies to help senior executives succeed in challenging competitive contexts. Hall started his career in venture capital/private equity, working for Advent International, both in the U.S. and Latin America. He then transitioned from finance to operations, managing five venture-backed businesses – four of them technology/internet related, and one with retail, manufacturing and real estate development units. Hall holds a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard University. At Harvard, he worked as an independent researcher with professor, competitive strategy guru and renowned economist Michael E. Porter to develop and implement strategies for competitive inner-city economies. |
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Speech Topics
What Causes Successful Innovation?
It’s surprising how few leaders consider this question – probably because of a belief that innovation is inherently unpredictable, even random. Taddy Hall counters that if you do a quick scan of many successful new offerings, the differences that explain their success are hidden from view – but they’re not unpredictable, nor are they random. Sharing rich illustrations from diverse industries, Hall explores Jobs to be Done theory – revealing the ways in which customers “hire” products or services to make progress and enable desired experiences in their lives. Hall’s blend of storytelling and case studies enables leaders, and all those who play a role in innovation, to internalize and apply the causal mechanism of successful innovation.
Success by Design: The Perfect Innovation Process
Father of the quality movement Edwards Deming taught that “every process is perfectly designed to produce the outputs that it produces.” Just like the U.S. automakers of the mid-1980s, many leading firms are hamstrung by innovation processes that produce highly inconsistent and generally crummy results. Taddy Hall leverages the auto industry parallel as well as other examples to highlight that the current, poor state of innovation performance has both precedent and solution. For leaders eager to cut time, waste and cost from their innovation processes while increasing the contributions to growth generated by successful innovations, Hall helps them draft a compelling blueprint for successful transformation.
Prepare for the Future of the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry
The way consumers find, purchase, prepare and experience food in 2050 will make the early part of this century as quaint as the 1950’s seem to us today. Today’s flagship brands will be tomorrow’s ghost ship brands, believes Taddy Hall, barring a radical reconfiguration of business models – and mental models. He discusses how the capabilities that deliver this year’s profits can serve either as a springboard to create the future of nutrition or function as a sea anchor that slowly drags a company to its demise. He asserts that the courtly era of consumer packaged goods, in which familiar foes tussled over points of market share, will yield to a guerilla battlefield where unfamiliar threats play by unorthodox terms of engagement – creating a competitive dynamic closer to the ones that high tech entrepreneurs face today.
Navigate with Confidence: Innovation in Emerging Markets
Managers in emerging markets enjoy the riches of innovator’s gold: non-consumers. While firms in mature markets are often forced to wage trench warfare over zero sum contests, innovators in emerging markets find many more greenfield opportunities to create industries where only inadequate or nonexistent options existed previously. Success, however, requires the ability to see what is not there, says Taddy Hall. Managers trained to measure consumption will find their data sets and analytical tools unhelpful to the market-creator’s challenge. Having lived in emerging markets for several years and advised executives for more than two decades, Hall blends rich personal experience with robust theory, most notably Jobs to be Done theory and disruption, to enable leaders to navigate uncharted terrain with confidence.
Breakthrough Leadership: How Senior Leaders Enable – and Unwittingly Impede – Innovation
Leadership is a tricky topic, and one all too easily wrapped in platitudes and empty slogans. Yet, in our study of successful innovation initiatives, we find that the role of senior leadership is powerfully present in virtually every instance, says Taddy Hall. In fact, the only exceptions were cases in which a manager made a career-jeopardizing decision to flout the established incentives, process protocols, and direct instructions of superiors. Innovation should not require acts of heroism or genius. There are specific activities that must be rigorously managed – not simply proclaimed and delegated – from the C-suite. Hall helps chief executives who desire consistently successful innovation outcomes understand why mastering and performing these non-transferable duties is essential for sustained profitable growth.
On the Cusp of Transformation
In transitional times, legacy leaders face a critical challenge: leverage current capabilities to create the future or allow current capabilities to lose the future. How leaders act proves decisive, argues Taddy Hall. With a bedrock in Capabilities (RPP) and Jobs theories, Hall helps leaders see the hazards of expertise and operational excellence when managing in a discontinuous moment. The result is an optimistic, energizing and eminently practical perspective on how leaders can leverage current capabilities rather than fall prey to their strictures.
It’s surprising how few leaders consider this question – probably because of a belief that innovation is inherently unpredictable, even random. Taddy Hall counters that if you do a quick scan of many successful new offerings, the differences that explain their success are hidden from view – but they’re not unpredictable, nor are they random. Sharing rich illustrations from diverse industries, Hall explores Jobs to be Done theory – revealing the ways in which customers “hire” products or services to make progress and enable desired experiences in their lives. Hall’s blend of storytelling and case studies enables leaders, and all those who play a role in innovation, to internalize and apply the causal mechanism of successful innovation.
Success by Design: The Perfect Innovation Process
Father of the quality movement Edwards Deming taught that “every process is perfectly designed to produce the outputs that it produces.” Just like the U.S. automakers of the mid-1980s, many leading firms are hamstrung by innovation processes that produce highly inconsistent and generally crummy results. Taddy Hall leverages the auto industry parallel as well as other examples to highlight that the current, poor state of innovation performance has both precedent and solution. For leaders eager to cut time, waste and cost from their innovation processes while increasing the contributions to growth generated by successful innovations, Hall helps them draft a compelling blueprint for successful transformation.
Prepare for the Future of the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry
The way consumers find, purchase, prepare and experience food in 2050 will make the early part of this century as quaint as the 1950’s seem to us today. Today’s flagship brands will be tomorrow’s ghost ship brands, believes Taddy Hall, barring a radical reconfiguration of business models – and mental models. He discusses how the capabilities that deliver this year’s profits can serve either as a springboard to create the future of nutrition or function as a sea anchor that slowly drags a company to its demise. He asserts that the courtly era of consumer packaged goods, in which familiar foes tussled over points of market share, will yield to a guerilla battlefield where unfamiliar threats play by unorthodox terms of engagement – creating a competitive dynamic closer to the ones that high tech entrepreneurs face today.
Navigate with Confidence: Innovation in Emerging Markets
Managers in emerging markets enjoy the riches of innovator’s gold: non-consumers. While firms in mature markets are often forced to wage trench warfare over zero sum contests, innovators in emerging markets find many more greenfield opportunities to create industries where only inadequate or nonexistent options existed previously. Success, however, requires the ability to see what is not there, says Taddy Hall. Managers trained to measure consumption will find their data sets and analytical tools unhelpful to the market-creator’s challenge. Having lived in emerging markets for several years and advised executives for more than two decades, Hall blends rich personal experience with robust theory, most notably Jobs to be Done theory and disruption, to enable leaders to navigate uncharted terrain with confidence.
Breakthrough Leadership: How Senior Leaders Enable – and Unwittingly Impede – Innovation
Leadership is a tricky topic, and one all too easily wrapped in platitudes and empty slogans. Yet, in our study of successful innovation initiatives, we find that the role of senior leadership is powerfully present in virtually every instance, says Taddy Hall. In fact, the only exceptions were cases in which a manager made a career-jeopardizing decision to flout the established incentives, process protocols, and direct instructions of superiors. Innovation should not require acts of heroism or genius. There are specific activities that must be rigorously managed – not simply proclaimed and delegated – from the C-suite. Hall helps chief executives who desire consistently successful innovation outcomes understand why mastering and performing these non-transferable duties is essential for sustained profitable growth.
On the Cusp of Transformation
In transitional times, legacy leaders face a critical challenge: leverage current capabilities to create the future or allow current capabilities to lose the future. How leaders act proves decisive, argues Taddy Hall. With a bedrock in Capabilities (RPP) and Jobs theories, Hall helps leaders see the hazards of expertise and operational excellence when managing in a discontinuous moment. The result is an optimistic, energizing and eminently practical perspective on how leaders can leverage current capabilities rather than fall prey to their strictures.
