Innovation is Everybody's Business: How to Make Yourself Indispensable in Today's Hypercompetitive World

Chapter 5. Become an Assumption Assaulter: Blast Away at Personal, Organizational, and Industry Notions that Block Progress

My wife and I are lounging by the pool at the Hyatt Regency in Maui. It is late morning, and a gentle breeze wafts over the sunbathers and stirs the fronds of palm trees high above. Around me I see wall-to-wall human rotisseries all oiled up and turning at their leisure. Beams of sunlight illuminate the pool as waves crash just beyond the boardwalk. I watch servers in clean white sneakers puttering around with little trays, serving mai tais and piña coladas. There's even the faint aroma of plumeria in the air, and nothing smells better. What a peaceful scene.

Finally, when I can't stand lying in the sun any longer, I strike up a conversation with "Victor," a young man from Kenya who tells me he runs the hotel's children's program. Hyatt invented Camp Hyatt and pioneered transforming child care service into something really fun for kids ages 3 to 12. And Victor, as I soon discover, is an innovator in making the Camp Hyatt experience come alive for his guests.

"People have a lot of choices of where they'll stay, where they'll spend their money," Victor tells me, with an air of authority. "We want to provide the best experience to keep them coming back, so we keep making changes to make it even better." I might have expected to hear such sentiments from the hotel's general manager or from a seminar leader in one of the ballrooms nearby, but not from the manager ...