10 Lessons From Working With 100+ Founders

What lessons do you learn when you’ve been in the room, day in and day out, working with over a hundred transformative founders helping them build the narratives for their companies? 

10 lessons .. inspired by how FNDR founders have approached innovation:

1. Innovation is never one size fits all: People think that innovation is the domain of a creative or an inventor only – but that’s far from the case. The best founders inject their own spirit into their companies, and use it to lead innovation forward. 

2. Create the right conditions for innovation: It can be a scary, daunting process. You need to have a vulnerable interaction with yourself, with your company, with other perspectives to try to develop and nurture something new.

3. Narrative is a core source for innovation: Narrative is not just something you wrap around your product or your idea; it’s something that can drive that innovation. It can also drive recruitment and retention, with respect to both customers and employees. 

4. Introduce the new with the familiar: The most successful founders describe their innovations simply and clearly. Finding the balance between something that people recognize and what is new. They have a singular statement of intent that can describe their business and their role in culture.

5. True innovation is more than disruption: There’s a new wave of founders innovating thoughtfully and ethically, recognizing world challenges and needs, and responding to the unintended consequences of the last few decades upon the environment and people. 

6. Innovation unites both profit and purpose: In the last few years there’s been an increasing number and range of companies who are thinking about bigger questions like: how should we feed ourselves? Where do we get our energy from? How do we better understand each other? while matching new experiences and services with what people and the planet need.

7. Innovations are interactions with the new world (not a solution to an old world problem): It would be a misstep to create a great innovation and then position it simply as a solution to an old-world problem—because a problem-solution model is an inherently limited business model. 

8. Innovation thrives at the intersection between the physical and digital: We live in a single storytelling universe. Companies need to help people navigate both the digital and the physical. Innovation blooms within the tears between the two. 

9. Sustainability is a strategy, not a destination: We need to grow beyond sustainability. Economic growth and environmental protection is not zero-sum; we must actively recognize that we can achieve both with the right kind of business.

10. The future is a paradox… embrace it: The future never feels comfortable because it’s riddled with paradoxes and we often have difficulty rectifying those discrepancies. The best innovators draw positive change from these paradoxes. 

Apple revolutionized an industry by bridging technology and the liberal arts. Airbnb’s business model is intent on fulfilling a desire to travel anywhere and yet still feel at home. Innovating within these paradoxes has the potential of creating seminal brands.

---

For over a decade, James worked alongside Steve Jobs building Apple’s narrative for ground-breaking products such as the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, App Store & iPad. He founded and was CEO of Apple’s global agency of record, Media Arts Lab and later went on to work directly with Brian Chesky at Airbnb, before launching FNDR to build Narratives for founder-led companies globally. He is also the host of Fast Company's ‘Most Innovative Companies’ Podcast.