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tragedy. And Team USA had just played some dramatic earlier games that had exposed some of the vibrant players’ personalities. The brands of both teams had been humanized. We all felt an emotional connection. We were engaged on a deeper level with the women behind the two brands on the field.

I had the privilege of attending the Women’s World Cup Final in Germany thanks to my friend at Nike, Heidi Burgett. Sitting field side, I was able to expose what television feeds couldn’t, and the content resonated. But analytics showed that nothing outperformed a photo I tweeted of Team Japan thanking the world for their support after the devastating tsunami. Not even live video of the crowd as goals were scored and exclusive behind-the-scenes photos performed as well.

Figure 9.8

Team Japan thank-you

Not only did the world audience want to see Japan celebrate and feel good, they wanted to join in that feeling, so they participated in a record-breaking

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fashion. This wasn’t about soccer, sports, or patriotism. This was about live emotion, feeling good, and sharing the feeling. That evening, good went viral, and the value of the teams’ brands rose significantly. People want to help, want to be caught up in something bigger than themselves, and want to share the adventure with others.

Consider what this would mean to a large enterprise that embraced social media throughout every division of the company. Community relations and charitable initiatives would gain wider exposure and quicker momentum. They would also go a much longer way to creating an admired brand identity.

While it is di cult to measure the impact that scaling acts of goodness will have on company culture, one thing is certain: every brand has an opportunity to motivate every person along the value chain to add purpose to their days in a way that is unmatched historically.

In the end, every brand leaves a person a little better or a little worse with every interaction. From your splash page to your customer service representatives’ first response to the first tweet you and your teammates send each day, there is no such thing as a neutral interface. Who you are and why you do what you do every minute of every day will leave your audience a little better or little worse. The brands that matter today and tomorrow are the ones that have embraced the simplest and most authentic way to ensure that people are far more often better for interacting with them.

Power is rapidly shifting to the hands (or should we say fingers?) of the masses, and it’s trending positive. Renegades embrace that power and lead it into a force for scaling goodness and good business and then sharing the benefits with humanity.

How far will this go? Further than I’m sure any of us can imagine right now. But some renegade will. And then the rules will be elevated again.

Renegades, keep writing the rules.

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Th e Next Chapter

Innovation Allergy: The Unknown

Awhile back, I was at an upscale client event making small talk, which I’m secretly allergic to, and a gentleman approached me.

He proceeded to use fancy words to describe his fancy job and

his important and influential friends. Two-and-a-half strikes for this fancy fellow. One of the words he used was orthogonal. Little did he know how much impact that word has had on every aspect of my life. I pretended to be interested in his uh mazing word, which he continued to discuss as if the definition was obvious. With eyes glazing over, I deduced it would be awkward to ask Suri to define orthogonal mid-monologue, so I sneakily checked my trusty dictionary app instead: “Orthogonal: Intersecting or lying at right angles, a matrix

which preserves length or distance.”

Ahhh. I had previously blogged about something I called the “intersection of innovation,” demonstrating that true bliss resides where a person’s passion, skill, and purpose collide. Suddenly this blissful intersection had a new name: “orthogonal bliss.”

Your ongoing innovation revolves around this orthogonal intersection of your passion, your skill, and your purpose in life. The more you focus on

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opportunities that call on your sharpest skills and strongest passions in order to produce a result that fulfills your purpose, the more bliss you will have in your days. It looks like this:

Figure 10.1

Orthog

This notion of intersecting things we aren’t used to goes beyond personal bliss. When you intersect things that haven’t been mixed before, new possibilities arise in your life, your business endeavors, and the world too. Within those new possibilities are new solutions to longstanding problems and new opportunities that can reshape outdated protocols.

One warning: when you choose to intersect things that have not been mixed before, you must expect adversity. This adversity doesn’t change your responsibility as an innovator to inspire others to see the value in your new mixture so they come to embrace the mixture with their own skill, passion, and purpose, and then share it with others. It is the eternal obligation of renegades to collide with nonrenegades and recruit them to a better way. Not everyone will go along at first as the traditional audience fears and fights the disruptive,

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abnormal collision. But if the mixture is blissful, acceptance will eventually occur, and you’ll have di usion of innovation.

These new communication channels called social media are ultimately about innovating the way we do business. This intersection of business and social media creates discomfort. But it is a blissful discomfort if you will pour your sharpest skills, strongest passions, and highest purposes into the mix.

Did you know that people who understand their purpose live an average of seven years longer than people who don’t?

Figure 10.2

Ruthanne Jensen

Mom knows best, right? The statistic is more than a vote of confidence from my mom. Where skill, passion, and purpose collide, bliss resides, and this is not just my opinion. MetLife and Blue Zones Power conducted a study that showed people who wake up with a sense of purpose live up to seven years longer than those who don’t.1

This place of ideal intersection is also where work is no longer work. For the longest time, I had an excess of skill and passion yet a deficit of purpose. My life arrow wasn’t heading north. I was like the orthogonal diagram without the arrow. I would jump back and forth between what I was good at and what I was passionate about. Sometimes I’d have both going at the same time, but they weren’t going in any purposeful direction other than building a business.

That’s when I met Simon Sinek, who taught me that if I wasn’t starting with my “Why?” I was bound for trouble.

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I’ve since learned to make sure my work is always in integrity with my purpose. It’s one thing to put in twenty-hour days for months at a time and build a successful company that rewards me financially. It’s an entirely better thing when that hard work creates a successful business that also rewards me spiritually.

Today I’m writing the rules for my next chapter and injecting a higher purpose in everything I do. That begins with expanding the communities I’ve been building online through social media channels for the past several years. It’s now time to bridge the virtual and physical worlds and build an innovation community in the physical world.

The most community-minded city in the world is being built right now in downtown Las Vegas thanks to the vision of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh who believes, “If we fix the cities, we fix the world.” He envisioned and is funding a $350 million project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas and turn it into a hub of thoughtful, innovative, and globally minded businesses that change the world one city at a time. Digital Royalty has partnered with Tony, and we have just

Figure 10.3

Amy/Tony Heish Skype

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moved our headquarters to downtown Las Vegas to be part of this groundbreaking innovation. This is Tony and me exchanging a Skype high five to o - cially close our deal one Saturday afternoon.

Digital Royalty has also partnered with the NBA’s Baron Davis, point guard for the New York Knicks. I met Baron several years ago during the NBA All-Star Game in Phoenix when I worked for the Phoenix Suns. The league’s commissioner, David Stern, hosted an annual NBA Tech Summit in town a few days before the game. Not just anyone can get into the NBA Tech Summit. If you’re not the CEO of a major brand, you’re not getting in the door.

Going to this summit was a dream of mine, so I decided to volunteer at the check-in desk and try to sneak inside after the games began. Turns out that Baron Davis, NBA player/nerd, without a Tech Summit invitation, also planned to crash the digital Disneyland. We met outside the Tech Summit, and I helped Baron set up a twitter account for his infamous beard from the hallway because I wasn’t allowed inside after all. (Baron was allowed in; I was not.) We have been good friends ever since. Baron has always been an early adopter of social platforms with the ability to spot growth potential early on. Today he’s our investor and was our intern at Digital Royalty this summer in downtown Las Vegas.

In my next chapter, Digital Royalty will set out to redefi ne innovation through education. One of the primary reasons I wrote this book was that I believe in the power of sharing personal stories because it accelerates the process of learning on any level and in any industry. But there’s a need for each of us to relearn the way we learn. Education goes beyond classes and curriculum. Through simple storytelling, we can humanize the way we learn, making it more enjoyable and more applicable. So share your stories; share your lessons. Let’s speed up the process of learning, and teach each other how to innovate the way we lead our lives, businesses, communities, countries, and, ultimately, world.

But that’s only my innovative idea. What more could be accomplished if we all innovated on a regular basis! Social media makes it possible.

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As you begin your own renegade journey of innovation, make sure you’re in integrity with yourself and following what I refer to as your life compass—the critical ingredients that if incorporated in order inevitably lead to innovation: intent, idea, influence, and inspiration.

Figure 10.4

Life compass

Begin your days with your intent (your why). That’s your life’s arrow of integrity that ensures you are moving in the direction of your purpose. Your intentions set the stage for the rest of the innovation process and determine how your idea gains influence and whether it inspires others. With your intent defined, you then need an idea. From intent and idea, you must then gain influence for your idea in order to make it more scalable and reach more people. Once it gains influence, your audience then determines whether it inspires them enough to embrace it. You’ve not truly innovated until an audience

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embraces your idea—and that audience needs to be bigger than your mom and dad. Yes, it’s risky to toss any idea to the crowd, but it’s the only way to measure your idea’s true worth. And if it’s worthy, the rewards will come, and they will open doors for your next idea.

Follow the compass again and again, and soon your life will gain revolutionary momentum. Embrace the pull. Trust the revolution. Innovate your life.

As it turns out, you can have it all. You just have to define what your “all” is and then accept that it is always evolving. Onward and upward.

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