Innovation Perspectives - Do you need permission to innovate?

This is the first of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'What is the most dangerous current misconception in innovation?'. To kick it off, here is Steve Todd's perspective:

by Steve Todd


Who Needs Permission?

The most dangerous misconception that I often see in potential innovators is their belief that they need permission to innovate. Or approval. Or funding. Or a specific job title, for that matter.

Some innovators may be living in a culture where personal innovation is discouraged. Not to worry. Start a skunkworks and apologize later.

Most innovators, I fear, are waiting for someone to tell them to "go innovate". When this type of mentality is held by the majority of the corporate masses, the treadmill of incrementalism will take its toll on creativity.

It's a worthwhile exercise to compare the need for permission against my favorite equation:

Innovation = Productivity + Initiative + Collaboration.


Productivity

Do I need permission to be productive? Absolutely not! Productive people earn the right to innovate. When an employee not only meets but exceeds their corporate goals, they've given themselves the right to explore new opportunities. So go ahead and get started. The worst thing that can happen is that management might be surprised to see your extra effort (hopefully they'll be pleasantly surprised). Managers are also likely to be forgiving if they know that you're someone who delivers.

Of course, lack of productivity works against you. If you can't do your day job effectively, who's going to believe you when you propose something innovative?


Initiative

If productivity is the foundation of building an innovative career, initiative is the stairway out of the trenches and into creativity. When you find a problem that you'd like to sink your teeth into, and you can't think of a ready solution, take the initiative to learn more. Search for adjacent technologies that you feel may be relevant.

Do you need permission to take the initiative to learn? Of course not. Yet many employees fret that their managers might catch them learning about something that's not directly related to their day job. Remember: you've earned it because you're productive.


Collaboration

Your ability to innovate multiplies exponentially when you pull experts in to help solve your problem. Experts frequently appear as part of your learning process. You may read a paper, or join a forum, or post a question. Discussions occur and your learning accelerates as you connect directly. Do you need permission to connect with experts in adjacent spheres? Of course not. But your involvement and engagement is about to grow to a whole new level.

The collaboration stage is where the rubber meets the road. You've been productive in your day job. You've found a problem that you'd like to solve. You've taken initiative on your own, and you've made connections on your own. Your manager has either looked the other way or supported you because of your productivity.


Do you need permission to proceed any further?

The likely answer is "Yes".

So before you get started, you might want to make sure that you're working on a problem that solves a deep and compelling customer need. Because ultimately you will need permission from your company to deliver your solution into the hands of customers.

Delivery is the difference between an inventor (generates ideas) and an intrapreneur (generates and deliver ideas).

Want to innovate? Go ahead, you have my permission.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'What is the most dangerous current misconception in innovation?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Steve Todd is a high-tech inventor and author of the book Innovate With Influence. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 140 patent applications and billions in product revenue, he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground.

Influencing Your Innovation Potential

Interview - Steve Todd of "Innovate with Influence"



I have the pleasure of knowing Steve Todd (the Rockette on the left), a Distinguished Engineer for EMC Corporation with a hand in generating over 140 patent applications and billions of dollars in revenue. Steve has a great sense of humor and is the author of "Innovate with Influence - tales of a high-tech intrapreneur" - a new book that tells the story of his intrapreneurial adventures and quest for innovation. I had the opportunity to interview Steve about innovation, influence, and needs of the innovation workforce.


Here is the text from the interview:

1. When it comes to innovation, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?

Some organizations struggle to identify and tap into the expertise that exists outside of their organizations. Individual employees are at their innovative best when they can learn and collaborate outside of their own teams. Unfortunately, the working reality for many employees is to focus on productivity solely within their business unit. Corporations can help by encouraging employees to lift their heads up and explore new areas of interest. Ultimately, however, it's up to the employee to take a few risks of their own.


2. Any other tips you have for innovators on how to build their influence?

My quick tip for innovation is an easy-to-remember mathematical equation: Innovation = Productivity + Initiative + Collaboration. Always be productive on whatever tasks you are given. Get them done early and then take the initiative to learn something new. During your learning process, seek out experts and collaborate with them on new ideas.


3. What are some of your favorite tips for limiting your meeting participation?

I typically don't bring my laptop (or any other device that is web-enabled) to any meeting. I do this to give my full attention and engagement to the topic at hand. If I am tempted to bring my laptop, this means that I'm not very interested in the topic, or that I have more productive ways to spend my time. In this case I will double-check the agenda with the meeting organizer, and often ask them to post their agenda on an internal forum and add my comments in lieu of attending. If I can't wiggle out of a questionable meeting, I will attend remotely, set my phone on mute, and get some work done in parallel.


4. Do you have suggestions for effective cross-border virtual collaboration?

I use my corporation's social media toolset (known as EMC ONE) and shy away from corporate email. I've been working with St. Petersburg, Russia and Shanghai, China on some new product ideas, and I always attempt to make those conversations public. Somebody else in the world is always interested and has a unique perspective that can only be brought to the table using EMC's intranet. Since I work in EMC's Corporate Headquarters (Massachusetts, USA), I will usually try to entrust project ownership of the collaboration to my foreign co-workers. They like nothing better than to deliver something that they dreamed up in the initial stages.


5. Do you ever feel that you've limited your influence by limiting your executive visibility?

No. I'm in my third decade of delivering innovation and my lack of executive visibility has rarely limited my influence. I rely on building strongs bonds between my manager and his/her superior. THEY are the ones that have executive visibility; my team and I are the ones that deliver the end result to the customer. If this "chain of three" (myself, my manager, and his/her superior) are united in building an idea that brings great value to a customer, then selling an executive on a new idea is fairly straightforward.


6. What are some of the biggest barriers to innovation that you've seen in organizations?

The biggest barrier to innovation is the relegation of research into "ivory towers". Large corporations that sponsor dedicated "innovation centers" are often removed from the pain of customer problems. Ideas that flow out of a research center are often rejected by the developers in the trenches. Everyone has the passion to create. Innovation expectations should not be limited to people that work in a specific research facility.


7. If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?

I would encourage teachers to search out opportunities for global student collaboration. Partner with students in China, Russia, South America, etc. Students are used to this type of dialog with their friends; get them used to doing it in the classroom. Focus on world-wide issues that are important to our times, and encourage the students to propose their own ideas to their global peers. Students will quickly realize that they cannot innovate to the fullest in the workforce of the future unless they participate in global collaboration.


My book review of "Innovate with Influence" can be found here.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Book Review and Innovation Summary - "Innovate with Influence"

A few weeks ago I received "Innovate with Influence - tales of a high-tech intrapreneur" by Steve Todd in the mail. "Innovate with Influence" is a short (134 pages), easy, and pleasant read - almost like sitting down with Steve over a cup of coffee. Given that most innovation books are written by innovation consultants, it is rare to get a a first-person account from the innovation trenches, direct from an actual intrapreneur.

As an intrapreneur, Steve (and the book) don't concern themselves with a lot of theory, but instead on how you go about getting innovation done. And if you harbor the illusion that you have to burn the midnight oil to innovate, Steve has generated over 140 patent applications and billions of dollars in revenue for EMC from the solutions he has worked on, and still managed to leave at 5 o'clock along the way.

The book gives a first-person account of Steve's career, the projects he has worked on, and his approach to innovation. His keys to success?

• Getting things done early


• Building and leveraging influence


• Actively managing his career


• Actively managing his visibility


• Managing work-life balance to maximize creativity


• Combining expertise, customers, and adjacencies to create innovation


• Doing the important things first

So, if you'd like to get a different perspective on innovation, and see what it looks like through the eyes of an innovator, I highly encourage you to check out "Innovate with Influence". I'll leave you with one final concept from the book that speaks to the potential innovation that corporations leave on the table every day.

Many companies don't actively managing their portfolio of innovation potential across their divisions and business units, to look for new opportunities from combining new discoveries and capabilities spread across the organization. Steve refers to this idea as corporate potential energy and defines it like this:


"Corporate potential energy is the product innovation stored within corporate employees that has the potential to be converted into other forms of product innovation."


My interview with "Innovate with Influence" author Steve Todd can be found here.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Innovation Perspectives - Trench Innovation

This is the first of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on the following question:

"Where should innovation reside in an organization, and who should 'own' or manage innovation?"

To kick it off, here is 'Trench Innovation':

by Steve Todd

Where should innovation reside in an organization?

For many decades the answers have ranged from 'dedicated research facilities' to 'globally distributed research teams'. Hewlett-Packard has HP-Labs in Palo Alto. IBM has eight distributed research teams.

The highest executive levels within a corporation have looked to these teams and asked "where do we go next?"

These research teams often 'hand off' the latest innovative ideas to dedicated development organizations.

A recent article in the NY Times is questioning the efficiency of dedicated corporate R&D labs.

The truth of the matter is that innovation cannot solely reside in these organizations any more.

Innovation should reside in the corporate trenches.


Innovation by Pain

Consider a salesperson that loses a deal to a competitive rival, or a field engineer being raked over the coals for a product bug or feature deficiency. Are they motivated to come up with an innovative solution?

Consider a software engineer with a legacy software architecture that's hard to maintain. Consider a manager leading a team with a seemingly impossible deadline. Think about the pressure they feel when sales and support report the urgent laundry list of problems. Are the developers motivated to come up with a better way of doing things?

The people in the trenches are feeling the pain, and they operate with a sense of urgency that maximizes productivity. If innovation is all about the delivery of ideas, then the trenches is where innovation truly belongs.

Employees in the trenches are not motivated by solutions coming from a corporate R&D lab. They often view the research facility as an ivory tower.

My message to the trenches is this: you don't need permission from your corporation to innovate. Just do it. But it's a lot easier if the corporation knows how to leverage intrapreneurs. Here are two ways that a corporation can 'own' or 'manage' trench innovation.


"What are you working on that I don't know about"

Line managers working for a company with a 'trench innovation' mentality should be regularly asking their employees the above question. They should challenge their direct reports to pursue answers to pressing customer needs by researching creative solutions in a skunkworks fashion.

Some managers will punish their employees for working on solutions that are outside of their core job. I'm suggesting that managers encourage them to do just that. This is the most direct way to 'manage' innovation.


Corporate Ownership

Ownership of this type of innovation should be loosely coupled. A central monitoring entity should exist, typically in the office of the corporate CTO. They should be innovation ringmasters under the big tent of corporate, academic, and industrial circles.

The final piece of corporate ownership is a strong social media strategy. There needs to be a corporate backbone that enables collaboration between corporate intrapreneurs, academia, industry, and customers. Managers and employees should 'bubble up' their ideas through this mechanism.

When the highest levels of corporate executives asks "where do we go next?", they should look to their innovators in the trenches.

They're the ones standing right next to the customer.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles published so far from the different contributing authors on "Where should innovation reside?" by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Steve Todd is a high-tech inventor and author of the book Innovate With Influence. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 140 patent applications and billions in product revenue, he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground.

Innovation Perspectives - Leveraging Intrapreneurs

This is the second of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on The Importance of Innovation Strategy. On the heels of Braden Kelley's kickoff, here is another perspective:

by Steve Todd

If a corporation lacks a cohesive and well understood innovation strategy, can it still be productive and creative? I believe the answer is yes. Individual pockets of innovation can result in new products and services that significantly add to the corporate bottom line.

The downside of this approach is the amount of potential corporate energy that gets left on the table. Corporate intrapreneurs should be aware of and rallying around a well-defined innovation strategy. If they are not, then the company is missing out on a great opportunity to generate (and deliver!) breakthrough innovation.


The Role of an Innovation Strategy

I like this simple definition of a corporate intrapreneur: an innovator that conceives and delivers an idea at a large corporation. Every business unit has these types of individuals. They are uniquely creative, they are extraordinarily productive, and they collaborate well. They have successfully guided their idea through the hands of marketers, designers, testers, documenters, and salespeople. They are influential.

And their business units want to keep them right where they are.

Without a corporate innovation strategy, that's right where they'll stay. They will continue to innovate within their stovepipe and grow their core business.

A corporate innovation strategy must unite intrapreneurs by encouraging collaboration among them, without undue disruption to their respective business units!


Best Practices in Creating the Innovation Strategy

A corporate innovation strategy that effectively leverages intrapreneurs has the following characteristics. If implemented properly, it:

• searches for, identifies, and engages corporate intrapreneurs


• enables corporate (and global) relationships via social media tools


• provides a career growth track that rewards intrapreneurial collaboration


• gathers intrapreneurs for idea submissions and innovation summits


• provides opportunity for external collaboration with industry and university experts


• sends them to customers for bi-directional conversations

This strategy should be "loosely centralized" within a corporation, and is often funded as part of the office of the CTO.


Integrating Innovation and Corporate Strategies

This type of innovation strategy establishes a strong intrapreneurial community. When critical changes in corporate strategy occur, new directions and edicts can be directly presented to the most influential innovators in the corporation. They can collaborate amongst themselves and brainstorm new ways to combine technologies and meet market needs. They can recommend the creation of new business units with new processes. They know how to get "new things" done and can influence their co-workers to implement the strategy.

Intrapreneurs become stifled when they remain in their stovepipes. Get them to collaborate across boundaries and expose them to corporate direction.

And most importantly, get them in front of their customers.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on The Importance of Innovation Strategy by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Steve Todd is a high-tech inventor and author of the book Innovate With Influence. An EMC Intrapreneur with over 140 patent applications and billions in product revenue, he writes about innovation on his personal blog, the Information Playground.