How To Innovate in the Workplace
23 Video Views·Jun 11, 2025
Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it together.
Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon has devoted his professional life to help advance a vision of the world that does not yet exist; a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspired, feel safe wherever they are and end the day fulfilled by the work that they do.
Simon is the author of multiple best-selling books including Start With Why, Leaders Eat Last, Together is Better, and The Infinite Game.
You have to have optimism for innovation.
You have to have an infinite mindset for innovation.
Otherwise, it's features and benefits.
The risk tolerance has become smaller in companies.
The incentive structures no longer reward risk-taking,
they reward success, right?
I remember when I was young in my career,
I'll spare you the whole story,
but basically, I took part in something that failed
and I got a huge promotion.
And they promoted me for my initiative.
They rewarded the behavior, not the outcome.
And great cultures will recognize the behaviors
that they want repeated, not just the outcomes,
because if it's only outcome-based,
we're gonna play it safe,
because we're more likely to get an outcome, right?
So I think optimism plays a huge role
and that's where cause comes in,
which is we're trying to advance something
way bigger than ourselves
and the company and the leaders
can easily describe the vision,
the idealistic vision of the world we're trying to build.
I have a dream.
All men are created equal.
These are visions of worlds that don't exist
and never will, but they are strivings.
And the joy and the sense of progress that we make
every time we accomplish something
that makes us feel like we're getting closer
to that idealistic state,
but idealism and the optimism that idealism breeds
is essential and I fear that it's been lost in our country.
It's been lost from our national leaders.
And by the way, it's not a political thing.
It's been probably since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Like no Democrat or Republican
has effectively articulated a vision for America
that inspires all Americans.
And I think we've lost it in business.
If we look at our business leaders today
and our biggest companies,
they're more obsessed with their shareholder value
than they are with the visions
that they founded the companies with.
They're more obsessed with short-term incentive structures
than they are with long-term bets,
even if they fail a bunch of times.
And it's all of these things.
We keep replacing visionary CEOs with operators
to run our companies.
The number of CEOs that were the COO or CFO,
I just think over the past 40 years,
the way that capitalism has gone
and the rise of Miltonian and Jack Welchian capitalism,
we've seen one of the side effects
is an eroding of optimism and idealism.