Cultivating a culture of innovation and crowdsourcing: Inside the leadership philosophy of HeroX’s CEO — Kal K. Sahota

By Fatiha Boukouyen

Kal K. Sahota, a finance professional, began her career at HSBC Bank Canada and later joined Standard Life Mutual Fund wholesaling. She then joined Westward Advisors, a boutique tax and estate planning firm, where she found herself at a crossroads. Kal joined HeroX in 2015, focusing on revenue growth and pioneering open innovation across multiple industries. She received the Intercon Top 50 Tech Visionary Award in 2019 and was appointed president and CEO of HeroX in July 2021. Kal is now focused on building and driving HeroX’s growth strategy, which has positioned HeroX to become the #1 crowdsourcing platform partner in the industry. She is also a keynote speaker, workshop leader, and has been a featured guest on panel discussions, podcasts, and webinars summits throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

Kal believes that the main component of leading a big platform like HeroX is diversity in thinking.

Diversity is a crucial aspect of how leaders present themselves and engage with their organizations and other ecosystem actors. A successful organization thrives on this diversity, but it equally requires a leader driven by passion. The industry to which HeroX belongs is an ecosystem gathering individuals worldwide to participate. Therefore, the ability to connect with, understand, and value each participant is very important and fosters an environment that attracts the right innovators, brands, and organizations, creating a place where magic happens. When the ecosystem is right — marked by the appropriate platform, community, and a sense of value — innovation flourishes, and brands naturally gravitate towards this environment. As a woman leading HeroX, Kal embodies diverse thinking and perspectives. This diversity aids in nurturing the company’s values and benefits, allowing her to relate better to the business and innovators.

HeroX team is anchored in trust, fundamental to a trust-based leadership, which leads to psychological safety.

The team is committed to the company, its mission, and its vision. Transparency is another core element of leadership at HeroX, where everyone knows what should be done. Along with transparency, unique ability is encouraged, meaning the passion and love for one’s work that makes difficult tasks seem easy.

At HeroX, leadership is empowered by leveraging and balancing unique abilities to guide the platform’s goal-setting process, allowing the team to self-select the goals they whether want to lead or participate in. Even when disagreements arise, engagement is conducted respectfully, understanding that such disagreements often yield disruptions, which in turn prompt change, learning, and growth.

For Kal, leadership requires a balance of tenacity and compassion, leading to enlightenment. The magic of crowdsourcing lies in creating an environment that encourages participation and values each contribution, in other words, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute. Crowdsourcing reflects natural intellect and is about teaching people to fish.

Kal’s leadership philosophy is built on diversity, passion, trust, and empowerment, aiming to create an inclusive and supportive environment — a place where everyone has the opportunity to shine and contribute to collective success.

Fatiha Boukouyen: Let’s start with HeroX, what is it and how does it function?

Kal K. Sahota: Best way to answer this question is by offering a couple of examples. We have so many examples and stories of how our platform functions and the value it provides. Both of these happen to be NASA challenges. I find it so compelling that NASA, quite literally, has rocket scientists at their fingertips and even they see value in harnessing the power of the crowd.

· Exploring Hell Challenge: see here

We have so many great stories, one that comes to mind is the Exploring Hell Challenge, which was seeking designs for obstacle avoidance sensors on a mechanical rover that would be exploring the planet Venus.

One of the value adds we offer, particularly if a challenge has garnered a fair bit of interest from the crowd, is to host a winners webinar. It’s an amazing opportunity to meet the people behind the solutions, learn more about who they are, what inspired their idea, really interesting stories.

For the Exploring Hell Challenge the Best Prototype Prize went to a Latvian couple who designed a prototype in their backyard. The husband focused on the technical side and the wife specialized on the art and design side.

· Lunar Loo Challenge: see here AND see here for the junior challenge

Another example is Lunar Loo project from back in 2020, there were a few things that stood out.

A quick very broad overview of the project itself, so NASA was looking for a new toilet technology for when they go back to the moon as part of the Artemis mission.

We had hosted a similar project for NASA a few years earlier, so we expected to get a fair bit of press. The last time there was so much excitement and given the subject matter that we had a number of under-aged submissions.

Our challenge designers came up with a brilliant suggestion, in fact I think it was Eloise Young, to also launch a junior challenge in support of STEM.

We worked with the NASA team to host an inaugural junior challenge, we figured the submissions were going to come anyways, why not reward these young innovators with some NASA swag, bragging rights, etc. In fact, I think we also issued certificates to each of them.

Both the actual project and junior project were hugely successful for the sheer number of submissions we received.

We also periodically host a winners webinar following the close of a challenge, so I had the pleasure of actually hosting both the main winners and the junior winners.

Honestly, if any of your readers want to be inspired, you have to watch that webinar! The intellect, excitement and just unbelievable energy. It will leave you feeling moved and inspired.

Fatiha Boukouyen: How can you define crowdsourcing and crowdsourcing platforms?

Kal K. Sahota: HeroX is an all-purpose crowdsourcing platform. For our readers who may not be familiar with crowdsourcing, the concept is very simple but extremely powerful. Most people are familiar with crowdfunding, where you have an idea but lack the money. With crowdsourcing, you have the money but are looking for a solution or new idea.

Logic being, instead of limiting yourself to your in-house team or direct contacts, you take it to the crowd. The crowd is defined as any of the over 3b people connected to the worldwide web.

If organizations are blocked with solving a business issue, or are quite simply looking for new ideas (that might be new products or product packaging, a new technology, etc.). They come onto our platform and they host a challenge. They clearly articulate what they are looking for and invite anyone to present them with an idea or solution. The platform is turnkey and gives organizations everything they need to launch their challenge, monitor it, the judging process…all built right into the platform.

It’s also just good business. It minimizes the business risk, it’s a challenge. If someone doesn’t present you with a winning solution, you simply don’t award. That said, our success rate is over 85%.

What’s interesting is that research has shown that the most disruptive ideas often come from those outside of their area of expertise.

If you think about it, when you have the curse of knowledge you are at a disadvantage. If someone looks at what you are solving for with fresh eyes or different perspective if you will, they may see something that you’ve been missing.

Crowdsourcing is becoming more mainstream, organizations leverage it to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of business. In fact, I’d say it’s fast becoming a necessary tool that businesses will need in their tool kit.

Fatiha Boukouyen: Why did you decide to create a crowdsourcing platform?

Kal K. Sahota: As I said, the concept has been around for decades. Most would agree that crowdsourcing was born in 1714, when the British Parliament launched the Longitude Prize, soliciting a reliable method of determining a ship’s longitude at sea.

We are a direct spin off of the XPRIZE.org. XPRIZE focuses on incentive competitions that ultimately create humanitarian breakthroughs — same concept but at a much grander scale. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, they just launched $101M XPRIZE HEALTHSPAN TO DRIVE HEALTHIER AGING FOR ALL. The $101 million, 7-year global competition will incentivize teams to develop and test therapeutics to improve healthy aging and close the gap between life and health expectancy.

HeroX focuses on making crowdsourcing more accessible at scale for organizations at all price amounts. There’s no minimum or maximum prize amount. In fact, the prize can be non-monetary.

So long as it’s socially responsible, legal and ethical, organizations can host a challenge on our platform.

Fatiha Boukouyen: What distinguishes HeroX from other competitors’ platforms?

Kal K. Sahota: This is what distinguishes HeroX:

· Success fee model — minimizes business risk.

· Social network for innovation only place to build, grow and communicate with your own crowd.

· General all-purpose platform, not specific to any time of challenges. So long as it’s socially responsible, legal and ethical you can crowdsource anything in any industry.

· Crowd is global and completely uncredentialed, leaning more powerfully into the concept that your best and most creative ideas could be locked away in the minds of the most unexpected of problem solvers.

Fatiha Boukouyen: Is there a specific crowdsourcing process that HeroX follows?

Kal K. Sahota: There are a number of key tenants that ensure any project is successful. Beyond this, we are flexible and customizable based on the specific needs of the project. Those tenants include:

· Clearly define the problem. Oftentimes, the first problem our clients come to us with is not the root cause of what they are experiencing. Digging deeper to get to the root of the problem and then communicating it in such a way that anyone can understand allows industry outsiders to offer game changing solutions.

· Clearly define what success looks like. Set the bench marks and what needs to be true for something to be successful.

· Do not define the how — the real power of crowdsourcing comes from allowing surprising and out of the box thinking. Avoid defining the method, this is the creativity the crowd can bring.

Fatiha Boukouyen: How do you avoid value destruction on HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: HeroX is a two-sided platform and we exist to serve our solvers as much as we do the sponsors of the projects. We avoid waste and value destruction by prioritizing the solver experience. This includes having larger competitions be stage gated where initial submissions are open to anyone and then downselected winners receive a prize to participate in a subsequent phase that is only open to those first round winners. In this way, we avoid waste and support people in doing meaningful work.

Fatiha Boukouyen: We often talk about what value does crowdsourcing create to businesses, to the crowd, but we do not highlight the value that it creates to crowdsourcing platforms. Therefore, what value or benefits has crowdsourcing created to HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: I came into this space very serendipitously. I come from a 25-year background in financial services, and joined HeroX back in 2015. I’m one of those people who’s always wanted to make a difference in the world, that’s not just a line…but quite literally. I just didn’t really know how to go about it to make a real meaningful impact.

I would say that being a HeroXer is the closest aligned to who I am and it’s given me a vehicle to drive towards that impact and positive change that I aspire to.

In my humble opinion, so many of us have so much. In fact, we have more than what we need. How is it possible that in a world of so much abundance, kids are still going to bed hungry…quite simply put…that’s just wrong.

Let me share this. How do we define intellect, you can certainly self-profess, however, we are often asked for our credentials or academic achievements so we can qualify our skills, abilities and knowledge. Where did you go to school? How many years of experience do you have, etc.

I invite you to consider, when you look at the whole of the world, that what I just described is such a small group of people. What of all those who do not have access or cannot afford an education…does that make them any less capable, or lacking intellect? No.

Crowdsourcing allows organizations access to tap into an uncredentialed global crowd. If you have connectivity you can compete in a challenge and if you have the best idea…you win. Period full stop. It removes all barriers…doesn’t matter what color, creed, religion, education, social status, or where in the world you are located…crowdsourcing by design creates a level of fairness.

That is where my passion lies, democratizing opportunities for all citizens of this world. Giving them an opportunity to “fish”, so they can then in turn take care of themselves and their families.

Quite simply, my personal goal is to leave this world in a better place.

Fatiha Boukouyen: As an international leading platform, what role does HeroX plays in the ecosystem?

Kal K. Sahota: The role of HeroX resides in:

· creating an ecosystem for brands and organizations

· partnerships with other in the innovation ecosystem — accelerators, grants, etc.

· thought leadership

Fatiha Boukouyen: What keeps HeroX team motivated and how does the team manage such a big leading crowdsourcing platform — HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: Several points can be highlighted:

· The ultimate responsibility for success lives with me, I own that 1000%.

· To create the environment to inspire excellence you must create an environment where team members feel safe if they fail. Very few successes are hit on the first take, you need to continue to try, to improve to grow past what you learned from the last out take.

· The fail fast mindset is how we get to success. If the team sees a downside to failing or that there will be some form of judgment, then we stifle their genius and ingenuity.

· My approach is simple: Everything that goes right, every single one of our wins, no matter how big or small, have nothing to do with me. It’s all about the team. Either individually or collectively, but nothing to do with me.

· Anytime something goes wrong, we fail, we miss targets, that’s on me. I stand in front. We rise and fall as a team, but I stand in front.

· I don’t show up to work and say “how am I going to get X done”, I wake up every morning asking myself, how am I going to inspire today. If I accomplish the tasks in front of me, that’s one person, if I can compel and inspire a team to reach and even go beyond their capacity…that’s how you drive exponential results.

Fatiha Boukouyen: How do you manage Talents on HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: We are building a community and are in service of them. We nurture their growth through hosting things like winners webinars to learn from other solvers and including capacity building within many of our initiatives. Ultimately though, the HeroX community is self-selecting. We build a network of opportunities that our community can opt into.

Fatiha Boukouyen: How do you maintain the motivation of the crowd on HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: We maintain the motivation of the crowd through a balance of incentives, large focus on non-monetary incentives such as R&D support, prototype testing, participation in events, networking, exposure to leading companies such as NASA.

Fatiha Boukouyen: What kind of impact has AI on the creativity of the crowd?

Kal K. Sahota: AI can support the crowd in building an understanding of a new industry or subject, great for knowledge acquisition. Supports rapid ideations, but like anything it is just a tool. We think AI enhances the creativity and does not replace it.

Fatiha Boukouyen: To what extent did AI and several new technologies such as Metaverse, Blockchain, and NFTs contribute to the success of HeroX?

Kal K. Sahota: We have integrated the HeroX platform with LLM to enable AI capabilities. We currently use this in-house in test mode and recently hosted a webinar with key clients to showcase capabilities. We will be rolling this feature out live to clients in Q1. With respect to Metaverse, Blockchain and NFTs, I can’t say there’s any direct impact on HeroX, other than the interest created in overall business which is reflected in some of the challenges we’ve hosted over the last couple of years, such as:

· https://www.herox.com/BlockchainBreakthroughs/teams

· https://www.herox.com/AirbusMetaverse/teams

Fatiha Boukouyen: Do you think that AI, Metaverse, Blockchain, NFTs have attracted more participants?

Kal K. Sahota: It’s difficult to say, there may be a correlation there, but I can’t say for certain. That sad, any move towards greater use of technology is going to broaden the interest and skill set of our potential solvers, so I’d say likely “yes”.

Fatiha Boukouyen: What values should a Leader of a crowdsourcing platform such as — HeroX — have in order to create value for all actors’ ecosystem including the team, businesses, the crowd, and other partners?

Kal K. Sahota: Great question. For me, trust-based leadership creates an environment that fosters trust throughout the organization, and a team that is foundationally built on trust will show up differently.

The concept of trust is easily understood, but not always easily achieved. In fact, it’s fundamental to having physiological safety within your team.

An example of how that shows up in our day to day: HeroXers are coached to show up “in service of” in every conversation — may that be in service of clients, partners (like yourself), or one another.

It’s simple really, if we trust in one another as team members, and I show up in service of you and you show up in service of me…both our needs are met.

The end result for the most part is the same but the journey and experience getting there is very different. The experience will leave you feeling grateful, empowered, and supported.

Lastly, I’ll add, it must come from leadership — not just in words, but in actions. I lead by example every day. I’m conscious of it in every conversation.

Fatiha Boukouyen: What is your advice for Leaders and for the Crowd (participants who would like to join HeroX)?

Kal K. Sahota: Go to HeroX.com

For those who want to potentially host a challenge, I’d say go to our site and look at the current challenges that are live to get a sense of what types of projects exist. It helps to take the concept of open innovation out of the conceptual when you can see live examples.

We also have success stories, so you can read all about how projects were successfully completed and what the results were.

For innovators, go to our site and get registered. From there you can see the plethora of live challenges and self-select the ones you want to compete in or if there are some you are simply interested in, you can also follow the challenge.

Anyone can reach me at kal@herox.com if you have any specific questions.

Thank you for the opportunity to share what we are up to at HeroX.

Fatiha Boukouyen: Thank you Kal for such an insightful leadership discussion.