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The success of any business, small or large, is heavily dependent on innovation. But so many people make the mistake of equating innovation with a product or device that changes the world. Heads up: You don’t have to create the next Facebook in order to innovate successfully and grow.

The president of SAP North America, Robert Courteau, and I recently sat down to talk about exactly that – innovation in today’s global age.  By the end of our talk, it was very clear that the most innovative companies have a solid foundation of talent at their core.

The foundation of any business is its people. With all the competition around, we need to retain our best talent by keeping our people engaged and challenged — or they’ll be gone, just like that, either because we’ll have to lay them off because things aren’t getting done, or because they’ll find somewhere better to work.

Bob touched on a few specific suggestions to help retain our best and brightest:

• Make employees feel accountable. Communicate that each of them is a real contributor and their successes carry the company — while visibly helping them cultivate their abilities.
• Show your employees that you have faith in their abilities. Grant them ownership over a project from beginning to the end and pushing them to extend themselves outside of their comfort zone.
• Keep your employees in a constant process of learning and challenge. Consider promoting employees even when they aren’t necessarily 100-percent ready. That’s the best way for you and them to come to understand what the person is capable of.
• Encourage interaction in organizations outside the workplace.
• Take your employees on leadership retreats. This clearly demonstrates that the company has real faith in them to lead others within the organization.

Companies like SAP, Apple, and the like have a mindset of constant forward motion and “driving the bus.” These companies don’t sit back and play defense, they dictate to the markets. An offensive mindset prevents complacency and apathy, both of which open the door for a competitor to steal market share or make a player obsolete.

One more thought: Even with all the time they focus on their own people, SAP doesn’t forget that their customers are the ultimate constituency they seek to serve and serve well. Their customers set high expectations, and SAP surpasses them. That’s the ultimate success strategy.

Reflect on your own company and the innovations you’ve come up with or implemented. Can you improve on them? How can you be more innovative? Do you have a client who could use a new contract structure that is mutually beneficial? Is there a product on the market that would help you better serve your customers and their needs? Is there a creative way to implement social media into your business and influence demand?

Finally, think about your employees. How can you make them happier? More productive? Is there something you or any of them can do on a personal level to strengthen a relationship with your biggest client?

Remember, innovation and growth stem from a strong foundation of people. Business is about people and they are what will help you innovate and grow.

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I met Garrett at Summit Series and was so impressed by his success story launching his nonprofit (buoyed by advice from NEA!) that I asked him to contribute a blog. Audacity and the power of a great idea are the big drivers here. - KF

I was a college student when I co-founded SEE College Prep, a non-profit that has helped more than 1,300 low-income high school students improve their SAT scores an average of 200 points and become the first in their families to go on to college. At the time, I had no idea what it meant to raise large amounts of money, or the kinds of relationships I would need to build to do so.

Fortunately, a friend clued me in to Keith and Never Eat Alone and that wisdom has supported me ever since. It has been an extraordinary learning curve: in a short period of time, I went from not knowing a single person who could donate more than a few hundred dollars, to raising nearly $2 million in 18 months.

I followed my heart, risked embarrassment by asking simple questions, and found the courage to ask for people’s time and eventually money. I was empowered by the mission of what I was trying to achieve, and since I had a calling I knew that no request was too silly or too bold. I reached out to mentor after mentor—first professors, then non-profit leaders, then heavy hitters like Stanford University President John Hennessy and billionaires John Fisher, John Morgridge, and Laurene Powell Jobs. Not all of these conversations were successful, but I saw first-hand how little I knew and how much people were willing to help. Technology has helped people like me: many of the most impressive people I’ve met have agreed to meet following a cold e-mail; some of those people are my closest mentors and advisors today.

When I reached my senior year at Stanford, I faced a daunting task: raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to support my co-founder and I post-graduation and our fledgling organization, or move on. For much of the year, I had my doubts. I even applied to other jobs, and acknowledged defeat formally when I accepted an offer to join McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles. As bold as I had thought I’d been, Stanford Business School Professor Bill Meehan told me that I hadn’t been brave enough: “You need just one major supporter to fill the top of the pyramid,” he said. Bill’s advice reminded me of Keith’s “genius of audacity,” and I was revitalized: if we could just find one $100,000 donor, the rest would fall into place.

Not many people can write a six-figure check. Fortunately, at the time I was the student representative on Stanford’s Board of Trustees, a prominent group of people that includes household names like the founders of Yahoo! and TPG. Unfortunately, all of the Trustees I asked to support our cause said no. Undeterred, I ultimately wrote to hundreds of other people: most ignored my messages, and those who agreed to meet rejected my request. Then, John Kissick—a very kind Stanford alum in private equity—said yes for $25,000, a phenomenal, catalytic gift that gave us the momentum we needed. Eventually, we met Coleman Fung, who pledged over $500,000 so my co-founder and I could launch SEE College Prep professionally post-graduation. The many conversations I had throughout this process taught me to build relationships before I desperately needed them, to always follow up or risk being forgotten, and to never forget the difference that just one highly influential person can make. These principles, all of which are highlighted in Keith’s book, were instrumental in developing SEE College Prep and who I am today.

In a short time, I’ve come a long way. We have now raised nearly $2 million to support our activities, and SEE College Prep now serves over 1,500 students at 25 California high schools. I try to be a resource to others, and give as much as I possibly can—especially to students looking to start organizations or companies. I attend conferences with confidence, and find meaning in virtually every conversation I have. Most importantly, I have many great relationships with people from all walks of life who support, challenge, and inspire me. I know I have a long way to go, but am energized by the fact that mastery of Keith’s teachings are mostly certainly a lifelong pursuit.

I am grateful to have gotten the opportunity to get to know Keith—first through his books and later through his speeches and home-cooked dinners. Like me, Keith aims to make a positive impact on the world. I am proud to be part of a generation that is so inspired by Keith’s work, and is equally committed to making our world a better place.

Garrett Neiman is the Co-Founder of SEE College Prep. You can learn more by visiting www.seecollegeprep.org or contacting Garrett at garrett at seecollegeprep.org.

First, an update on donations for Guatemala: Last week we asked you to help us raise $3200 so that we could fund every child from our trip. The balance as of Jan. 13, the day I'm writing this: $3367! I couldn't be more grateful.

Ready for this month's myGreenlight master's mission? John Hagel and John Seely Brown wrote this week's tip to help you diversify your network to expose you to the broadest range of ideas and opportunities. These simple tips will strengthen your safety net – try it! -KF

It is no surprise that we instinctively seek out those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the unforeseen changes around us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We may be even more vulnerable to being blindsided by events and trends coming at us from new and unusual directions.

The Internet compounds this narrowing by invisibly removing subjects and people from our online searches and even our casual exploration of websites, explains Eli Pariser in his new book, The Filter Bubble. Worse yet, we tend to become more extreme and entrenched in our beliefs when we become involved in a tight-knit group that shares them.

The bottom line: the choices we make and the technology we use can progressively narrow the range of experiences we have. To counteract the potential stultifying effects of the filter bubble we will have to overcome our natural instinct to seek out the comfort of those who are most like us. Here are some suggestions:

1. Audit and re-shape your social network. With the advent of online social network platforms we have an increasing visibility into the make-up of our personal social network. Whom do we interact with most frequently? How similar are they to us?

Scan the periphery of your social network and explore those "weak ties", the people you may have met briefly and who come from very different environments. Who are some of the most diverse people on the periphery of your network that you might benefit from getting to know better? How could you use online social networks to reach out to people you have never even met but who are engaged in arenas adjacent to your own interests? Each week, resolve to introduce yourself to a friend of a friend on an online network who seems to be the most interesting and most different from you.

2. Revise your conference calendar. How many conferences do you go to each year? How many of those conferences are in fields that you are deeply familiar with and draw people that are very similar to you?

Commit to attend at least one conference every year in a field that may be relevant to your interests but where you have very little experience. Spend some time at the conference trying to understand the key issues that are engaging the participants. Find at least one issue that has some potential relevance to issues that you are confronting and start conversations with people at the conference to explore where and how these issues might intersect.

3. Get more out of your social gatherings. At any reception or party you go to, no matter how similar the others might be to you, there are usually a few people who are from a very different mold. They often stick out like a sore thumb, looking very alone and uncomfortable. Seek those people out before settling in to the comfort of your friends and colleagues.

Early in the conversation ask, "What's of most interest for you here?" Ask open-ended follow-up questions to get closer to their core interest.

"Oh, and why's that fascinating for you?" Or ask the universally helpful question to get others to open up: "Tell me more about that." In so doing, you invite three opportunities for fresh insights: what that person tells you, how you react, and how they respond to you.

4. Act out diverse facets of yourself. Seeking novelty in your life? Why not tap into a long ignored passion and carve out some time to re-engage with it. Often our passions are far removed from the comfortable lives we have settled into. By re-connecting with these passions, we are likely to encounter people that are far removed from our daily experience. These new individuals are very likely to provide us with new insight about ourselves and what we have to offer.

Each of us has many selves. With strangers ‹ especially those who are different than your usual crowd ‹ you can project a different part of your personality. As you act differently, so will others in response to you, often leading conversations in new directions.

5. Share an experience in an unfamiliar situation. Because George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have quite different beliefs and temperaments, they probably learned more from each other during their joint visit to earthquake-stricken Haiti in 2010. They could observe different ways of interacting with people as well as of collecting ideas about how to help the situation. Seek out opportunities to share an experience with others who have different talents and ways of operating in the world. You'll learn more and you might also discover a hidden or atrophied talent or interest within yourself.

With each of these approaches you can burst constraining bubbles of limited viewpoints and experiences that lead to an ever-narrowing life view. Instead you invite in unexpected encounters with people that can trigger new thoughts, adventures and ways of engaging with others. Rather than diminishing the potential for serendipity, one of the by-products of filter bubbles, you can increase the number and quality of those unexpected encounters. In other words, you can shape serendipity to your advantage. You can create more options from which to live a richly varied life.

Do you find yourself limiting your relationships to people who are more like you when you're feeling insecure or uncertain, as the Johns suggest?

See the original post in HBR.

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This year, it wasn’t just “my” trip. I traveled to Antigua, one of Guatemala’s poorest regions, with a group of 11 others, all of whom not only volunteered but also made donations  (along with some of you via Paypal!). Together these donations will send 25 of the brightest, most promising children to school and pay for food and health care. Thank you to the Livecchi Family, the Lim Family, Gold, Jordan, and those who donated online!

Media entrepreneur Joe Livecchi wrote a trip diary and shared the story of a moment that I think is a strong metaphor for the entire experience. After spraining his ankle and having to sit out some of the day’s fun activities, he wrote: “One of the boys I had talked to earlier came over to check on me. He offers me a piece of the candy he retrieved from the piñata to try and ease my pain… That's when it hit me. I had flown thousands of miles to help these kids and I was the one being comforted by an eight-year-old child who has almost nothing.”

Again, we get more than we give. In fellow traveler Max Lyons’ words, “The transformational impact we're seeking to have in the lives of these children is being returned to me just as much, if not more so.”

Joe’s daughter, Sophie, age 12, wrote her own blog. My favorite line from it: “I suddenly just figured out this whole new world of poverty. Nobody on the other side realizes this world. If everyone could get the experience that I got to come here... The other half would be more grateful, and this half could get more help.”

As I wrote on the blog, I went intending to fund 10 children. I finished the trip with a total of 41 names. Together, between my donations, those of everyone on the trip, plus Paypal, we now have enough money to support 25. That means we’re looking for donations to support 16 more. For $200, these kids can go to school and have their basic needs paid for. I mean it when I say no donation is too small: If everyone who reads this email donates just ONE dollar, we’ll more than cover the $3200 we need for those children, and be able to support several more projects in those villages through Cultural Exchange.

Click here to contribute. I will follow up next week and let you know whether we hit the target!

If you’re interested in reading all the blogs from this year’s trip, here are the links together:

Max Lyons: The Transformational Impact of Service

Growing a Middle Class through Education: The Story of Our Seven

Collaborative Action Comes to Life in Guatemala

For Chet

In Guatemala, $200 Can Change a Life

Joe Livecchi: One Family, One Mission

Sophia Livecchi: Our Guatemalan Mission Through a Child's Eye

Thanks for reading – and I look forward to some of you coming on a future trip!

P.S. Check out Mark Goulston's Usable Insight mailings at: http://markgoulston.com and sign up at the NEWSLETTER SIGNUP window. I've  been a subscriber for several years!

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