Who is this guy writing on the windows? I need to learn more. That’s what first went through my mind when I saw Ben Feeney at MillerCoors Brewing (now MolsonCoors). I didn’t know what he was doing, all I knew was Ben was the needle, not the haystack.

While everyone else was sitting in cubes pecking away on powerpoint and email, Ben was holding court. He was showing his “shitty first draft” product strategy to others on a window of our office building. He was getting a point of view from people who had nothing to do with his project. He was not just innovating on our beer product pipeline, he was disrupting and reinventing how we worked.

I am not shy so I made an introduction later in the week, and it has been a connection that has forever changed my trajectory. I was a new ABM working on a core business and Ben was a seasoned manager leading an innovation team. I quickly learned that if I wanted a different answer, I needed to ask different questions and pick up some different tools.

He talked different. He thought different. He worked different. He asked more questions. He brought a childlike curiosity to everything. He looked at adjacent categories for inspiration. He brought props and lo-fi prototypes to meetings to bring abstract ideas to life and make the unimaginable feel real. He thought about design, customer problems and a host of other considerations I couldn’t find on my spreadsheet. At the time, I didn’t quite understand what it was all about, but I knew I wanted to learn more because his results and recommendations stood apart from the herd. So I became a student again and dove into the pool.

I wanted to profile Ben because we are told to innovate a lot. We are told to disrupt and bring fresh ideas. But so often we rely on the same tools, methods and modes of work that got us to the place we are trying to disrupt. Ben understood, as Audre Lorde understood, that “the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

In the past 9 years learning from Ben, this point has come into center-focus. Innovation requires teams to use different tools. Innovation requires teams to work in new ways. Innovation means learning the status-quo and the existing systems and norms so you can smartly and properly zag in a different direction.

Innovation means making most people uncomfortable. Innovation means taking swings and having some big misses because no one bats 1K. Innovation means having the courage to challenge the status quo and also scavenge for (or invent) new tools so you can fight for substantive change.

Unfortunately, in the 9 years since I first met Ben, the “performance” of innovation has ratcheted up. Post-its, “How Might We” statements, and Sharpies abound. But simply adorning the signals and symbols of innovation will not make you an innovator and will not guarantee disruptive and breakthrough ideas. A post-it and a sharpie does not make an innovator. Audacity, faith and imagination do. Ben has all that, and a couple post-its too.