How might Danfoss adopt the best of Silicon Valley to radically transform [speed, disrupt, impact] our ability [people, mindset, approach] to innovate digital [access, mobility, automation] experiences and connected products for our customers—and our business?

On June 30, 2016, leaders from Danfoss gathered in Half Moon Bay for the Build a Rocket Blitz. The Blitz was designed to provide inspiration and learning on how and what Danfoss may do to power internal innovation and change.

Our objectives

• Invigorate Danfoss' leaders to expel any creeping complacency within their teams
• Awareness of the rapidly evolving technology and process landscape, and the challenges and opportunities that it offers to Danfoss in becoming faster and leaner.
• Alertness to Danfoss' needs to make the right products, in the right way, faster—so that Danfoss stays ahead of competitors and never gets caught on a "burning platform".
• A commitment among leadership to become ambassadors for, and to personally drive, a new way of thinking and working along a bold path that results in connected products and services, digital customer experience, and speed in innovation.

Desired outcomes

• We have a portfolio of potential disruptive solutions and small bets ready to be made to accelerate learning and insight
• We have new insights and approaches as to how we might:
• Generate ideas that leverage our core assets
• Identify new opportunities within our markets
• Build organizational muscle to pursue new opportunities quickly
• We are fueled with fresh insights and inspiration
• We are equipped to change the way things are with Think Wrong Language, Frameworks, Tools, and Techniques
• We have built meaningful connections within the creative thinkers of our organization

We used a variety of Think Wrong Drills to leverage our learning and experience from the previous 2 1/2 days to create a portfolio of small bets that start to answer the hardest questions which stand between us and venturing along a bold path of change and innovation.

All of us find ourselves on the predictable path of how things have been, how things are, and how they will be. This status quo is forged by the synaptic connections in our brains and our cultural beliefs, biases, orthodoxies, and assumptions.

But if you are not content with the predictable path, you dare to look beyond the status quo. You imagine different outcomes than the one the predictable path leads to. So how do you forge a bold path? How do you take the Einsteinian and Steve Jobsian leap into the uncertain and unknown?

Our best leaders and employees fight the powerful biological and cultural forces that conspire to force them back onto the predictable path. They find ways to blaze a bold path—and to resist snapping back to business as usual—when it matters most. 

To keep from losing to the norm, we need to be able to deflect from the status quo and protect ourselves from the biological and cultural forces trying to pull us back in.

The human brain is amazing. It locks in what we experience and learn on the fly. This learning builds neural pathways that enable us to make quick, shortcut decisions and to take action without thinking or having to relearn simple tasks. This is good. Imagine if we had to Google “How to brush my teeth” every morning.

The complications that arise from how we’re biologically wired are compounded when a collection of brains works this way. Group think becomes group belief. Group belief becomes dominant culture. What’s acceptable, normal, and expected conspires against anything that lies outside the shared beliefs, biases, orthodoxies, and assumptions of the organization, community, tribe, state, or nation.

If we want to go from A to Steaming Round Thing, we need to trick our brains. We need to let go of our beliefs, biases, orthodoxies, and assumptions. We need to start solving from a brand-new place. We need to unleash our inner Picassos.

There is an obsession—from schools, executives, and consultants—with best practices, optimization, ROI, and metrics. These have become the standard by which we’re told we should measure ourselves and our impact. 

When we are certain which problem to tackle, and we know how to solve it, Think Right Practices are useful. They help eliminate waste, improve quality, scale solutions, and increase productivity.

But Think Right Practices provide the answer to a very small subset of challenges—those for which we are certain of the problem and know the solution. Thinking right is wrong when we’re seeking solutions beyond the status quo.

When it comes to discovery, innovation, and changing the game, adopting the mindset of a scientist or an artist with a hypothesis is much more likely to yield insights and new possibilities than conventional, think right business practices.

To successfully navigate the uncertain and unknown, we need a new language, new frameworks, new techniques, and new tools.

Framer-in-Chief
Anchors & Rockets

Love & Loathe
Steal Like An Artist

Name It
 

Learn From Investment
Do It on Monday

Matters Most
Asset Jam
New New
SASU
 

Each Think Wrong drill produces useful output. Documentation of our work provides a rich collection of ideas and insights to mine as we move forward. 

Matters
Most
 

Love
&
Loathe

Asset
Jam

Steal
Like An
Artist

New
New

Name
It

Anchors
&
Rockets

Learn
From
Investment

Do It
On
Monday

We considered who might be most important to our success—and who our success might matter most to. 

We used Matters Most—a Move Fast drill—and uncovered a new way of understanding who we should make solutions for — breaking down categories and understanding who really matters most if we want to make our clients become heroes to their clients—making us indispensable.

We discovered what's wrong in a relationship, and what's right—helping us identify the pain points we can solve to drive positive change.

We used Love & Loathe—a Let Go drill—to recognize that a bad starting point can be used to make something astounding. The drill gives us:

• An inventory of improvement opportunities.
• Increased empathy

We wanted to make the most out of the resources we already have available.

We used Asset Jam—a Move Fast drill—to build an inventory of the resources that are available to us to solve our problems without the need for additional large scale investment, and as a basis for creating ingenious solutions. The drill gives us:

• Inventory of resources with which to solve 
• Recognition that there is much to work with

We wanted to use what has been successful in the past to learn and drive change.

We used Steal Like An Artist—a Let Go drill—to shamelessly take from who and what we had seen to build new solutions to our challenge instead of being proprietary and starting from scratch we reused what is readily available to us already. The drill gives us:

• Compelling hacks of existing solutions that others already use and that might prove easier to execute.

We wanted to quickly identify which of our ideas have the potential to be new businesses, market growers, or improvements to existing offer.

We used New New—a Move Fast drill—to quickly use our combined expertise to decide which of the many ideas we'd created were making the best use of our core competencies. The drill gives us:

• New business ideas 
• Market expanding ideas 
• Offer enhancements

We crafted a story for our emerging solution—and understood how people might experience it.

We used Name It—a Make Stuff drill— to bring ideas to life to understand their potential—and to allow them to inspire other potential solutions. Afterwards we had

• Better understanding of our emerging solutions
• Early use scenarios 
• Ability to share and learn from others

Team 1

Name: The Immortal Machine (TIM)

Tagline: Promising perpetual perfomance 

Team 2

Name: Starship “Entreprise”

Tagline: To boldly go where Danfoss has not gone before.

Team 3

Name: Connected Cows

Tagline: Virtual farm.

Team 4

Name: Bat Tech 

Tagline: See it first.

Team 5

Name: DanFast 

Tagline: DanFast is damn fast!

Team 6

Name: Fosbury

Tagline: Backwards Thinking.

We wanted to explore the obstacles in our way, and the forces that might accelerate our solutions. 

We used Anchors & Rockets—a Be Bold drill—to understand what might prevent us from achieving success with our solutions and what might propel us forward, providing an inventory of what we should leverage and where we need to address issues, and an understanding and connection with the challenge you face.

We wanted to place a higher value on discovering new things than being right.

We used Learn From Investment—a Bet Small drill— to focus on LFI (Learning from Investment) to learn more about the true nature of your challenge, opportunity, and what about our emerging solution works—and doesn't. We discovered:

• Design, development, and implementation priorities 
• Insight into the most fruitful small bets 
• Freedom from being right

Team 1
Do It on Monday: 

Team 2
Do It on Monday:

Team 3
Do It on Monday:

Team 4
Do It on Monday:

Team 5
Do It on Monday:

Team 6
Do It on Monday:

Thinking wrong produces valuable resources for the challenge your Blitz was designed to address—and other challenges you might be facing. 

Future provides Blitzers with access to the Think Wrong Lab so you can get maximum value from the resources we have generated together. 

Click OVERVIEW below and log in to the Lab for a quick recap of the purpose of the Blitz.

Click BLITZERS below and log in to the Lab to see who participated in the Blitz.

Click GUIDE below and log in to the Lab to access the final guide for the Blitz. Learn how to run a drill by clicking it in the Guide.

To view the complete collection of photographs, videos, and audio files documenting your Blitz, click MEDIA below.

• Media is organized by Think Wrong Practice and Drill. Folders titled B Roll or In Action contain photos of Blitzers working together. Folders titled Output contain detailed documentation of what was produced through the drill.

If you cannot remember your password for the Think Wrong Lab, click Get New Password on the login screen and one will be emailed to you.

Happy browsing!