What is Innovation Agility?

By Hao Dinh
Fuels and Services Innovation Leader 
and Growth Hacker
GE Power 






What is innovation agility and why should organizations care? From my experience, driving innovation through agility involves experimenting in numerous areas while quickly prototyping to learn which of the ideas are viable to not only solve your customer’s issues but also, generate profitable business models. I’ve found that outsourcing certain innovation initiatives enables firms to move ideas quicker to market.

Successful innovation is a numbers game. Think of a funnel where a lot of new ideas come in, and only a small percentage make it through as viable solutions. A 2003 Harvard Business Review estimates the innovation failure rate can be around 90% (Andrew and Sirkin, 2003). With limited resources, e.g. personnel, funds and time, companies need methods to improve their innovation successes. One option is to outsource a portion of your innovation initiatives. Keep in-house new offerings focused on existing intellectual properties or core competencies. However, for emerging technologies, consider leveraging outside capabilities to de-risk these innovations.

Let’s take the example of the blockchain, an emerging, distributed ledger technology that promises to enable exchanges between trading partners without the oversight or intermediation of a third party, actively reducing or even eliminating counterparty risk. For financial transactions and legal processes, blockchain could replace banks and law firms. According to UK research firm, Juniper Research, more than half of the world’s large corporations are looking into blockchain. However, discussions within my network of innovation leaders indicate piloting a distributed ledger prototype is challenging. Since blockchain is a nascent technology, experts in the field are limited and are either unwilling to work for corporations or are requesting exorbitant salaries. Additionally, organizations need to assess if they should invest in hiring blockchain teams since the business case for the technology has not been validated. Thus, outsourcing blockchain innovation is a viable option.

There are incubators, startups, software companies, and universities focused on developing and validating blockchain solutions that firms can outsource. I’m part of a consortium of nine Fortune 100 organizations that have come together to co-innovate with emerging technologies such as blockchain, AI, IoT and AR/VR. The consortium is called coLab and is led by IDEO, a global innovation and design leader, renowned for helping organizations think differently and to quickly prototype ideas to market. The coLab members come together to complete prototypes, which are developed in 3 – 5 days, utilizing the emerging technologies for various use cases. Additionally, the IDEO brand has attracted experts in the emerging technologies to come work at the coLab. We’ve developed 10+ blockchain prototypes, which the coLab members use to assess if the results of the experiments generate business cases to warrant further investments in the technology. For the annual cost of the coLab membership, members receive the opportunity to “try out” new technologies and business models and selectively determine which ones they should brought back to their organizations to develop further. 

Now replace blockchain from the above outsourcing innovation example with any new technology or idea your organization wants to assess. If the new idea is not part of your core business, you don’t have related intellectual property, or you have challenges finding experts in that area, consider outsourcing the innovation.

Hao Dinh is a continuous learner passionate about using Design Thinking/LEAN Startup, Technologies & Change Management principles to solve “big” issues. At GE Power, he has been transforming a $1B Fortune 10 conservative organization into an innovation powerhouse by nurturing an entrepreneurial culture that fosters collaboration, a fail forward mentality and a fun work environment. 

In September 2016, Hao was honored to be selected by IDEO and the University of Pennsylvania to partner with 20 designers, entrepreneurs and change agents from around the world to use Design Thinking to drive social innovation. Hao is also Co-Founder and Chief Ideator for Grow by Design, a nonprofit that firmly believes it takes a community to educate the next generation of leaders and innovators.

Cultivating an Agile Mindset

By Robert Zeas
Global Strategic Competitive Intelligence
Level 3 Communications








As I reflect on my service in various intelligence capacities, I find the agility my colleagues astutely observe in my approach has come from two places. First, at the beginning of my career, I served in a high-pressure sales role. This led to my embracing a highly adaptive, time bound success approach to all work on a non-discriminatory basis. What does this mean? Well, simply treating all clients as I would expect, including now in my service in a staff role. Don’t make clients unduly wait for things they should receive attention and support with, even when you may not truly have the time-and the activity isn’t highly visible and doesn’t always earn managerial praise. 

In my intelligence role, this means every qualified business question you are fortunate enough to have a client approach with means they are placing tangible value in your business perspective and skills to serve their needs. Just like the Hard Rock motto, “Love all. Serve All.” And let them know up front exactly when you will be back with them to deliver on this promise.

Second, I actively seek out and immerse myself in a variety of broad “stretch” projects with my senior leadership. What reflection techniques do you use to begin working on an innovation facing project whose topic is entirely new or foreign to you? When is the best time and where is the best setting for you to reflect and begin work? I don’t like to fess up on this one, but vacations and driving time are the best times for me to brainstorm new approaches for new learning. Inspirational keynote speeches from industry leaders instill new perspective. My local Rocky Mountain SCIP leadership serves as an excellent sounding board!  

Any way you decide to approach your innovation reflection time, or new ‘white space’ topics, means we as practitioners get to ride a new adventure in learning along the way. Dig in. Embrace the new. Over time, you will gain a reputation for being a multi-skilled intelligence ninja. Becoming more resilient in handling new leadership topics increases your agility and depth as a thought leader in multiple realms salient to your business. This approach also helps prepare you for board rooms and future career leadership opportunities.

Innovative frameworks and initiatives often arise through collaborative engagement with academia and the supply chain. Additionally, reviewing various intelligence sources can help direct you to areas of innovation adoption for your business. Here’s a list of sub-topics that will help as you begin framing your research scope in support of innovation projects. These intelligence sources help define and identify emerging innovation opportunities:

Peer reviewed journal articles           University research collaborations
Supply chain proof of concept trials   Doctoral dissertations
Public and private equity funding       Hiring activities in areas of emerging expertise
Patent filings                                    Innovations in alliance led distribution models
Professional business forums            Co-funded research and development

The more diversity in serving our business stakeholders and related project topics- the broader and stronger our bench skills become.Seldom are we going to find instances where the seeds of innovation are found in the press, news feeds or other intelligence sources. Commit time to remove distractions to permit quality reflection time. Brainstorm and organize sub-topics to begin your research and supply chain engagement. As an excellent sounding board, confer with your SCIP local chapter peers and leadership. Good things come, enjoy your journeys until our next meet up my friends!

Robert has served as a Senior Executive Advisor for several Global Fortune 1000 firms. In this capacity, he led U.S. and global competitive intelligence programs, primary pricing research and managed P&L responsibilities directly contributing $195M+ in revenue.

Also in his advisory capacity, Robert has led enterprise market intelligence briefings with senior executive leadership in development and support of long term strategy.  Robert relies on his leadership to ensure the insight and guidance provided is accretive to shareholder value, enhances the customer experience and innovates in a rapidly evolving technology marketplace.

Guidelines for Creating a More Innovative Organization

By Ron Batra
Senior Director and Fellow, Innovation
Equinix






In today’s hyper-competitive and fast-changing business environment, it is innovation and innovation alone that is separating businesses that will survive and thrive from the ones who will get disrupted.  Innovation and disruption are often the two sides of a coin.  You don’t have to look very far to see how cutting edge software and solid operational models can succeed. As an example, look at how the ride-sharing app companies are disrupting taxi cabs all over the world.

Recent advances in technologies such as cloud computing, 3-D printing, big data, the growth of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence advances in machine learning have enabled change in an irreversible manner. Products and services are making their way much more quickly to market, accompanied by a reduction in the time duration of Product Lifecycle Management.  The rise of cloud and subscription-based models has reduced the need for massive capital outlays, lowering the bar of entry for competitors who previously could not raise capital to innovate and disrupt.  This is in addition to advances in software provisioning and automation that greatly reduce cycle time, shortening systems development times.

In addition, for products with Internet distribution, defects as well as killer features are noticed quickly, and can become viral very quickly.  Buying decisions for most people are influenced by community feedback, with real capability to disrupt known brands and take away market share from established businesses. 

In this environment, the following working tenets must become second nature:

1. A Systematic Innovation Culture 
2. Agility and Speed 
3. External Feedback and Validation 
4. Instead, Ideation + Passion + Focus is a great way to do it. It takes a different kind of a DNA to ideate and innovate. There are team members who are brilliant at operations and execution and typically they are not the ones who innovate (but often do Business Process Innovation, which is a step in the right direction). You need "Believers," more "Can-Do" versus "Cannot-Do" people.  I recommend developing the ideas with passionate people and getting them focused on key decisions and strategies to solve for something real.

Businesses have to learn to fail faster and fail-often, in the evaluation of new concepts, products and ideas.  In most cases, this means the lifecycle of Product Lifecycle Management cannot afford the luxury of waterfall style approaches and long windows from inception to phased introduction to revenue and growth scaling. 

As an example, in software development, techniques such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) help automated processes and enable agility – resulting in product updates – from monthly and quarterly to weekly. Processes to tap into external feedback have to be set up and the loop has to make its way into the requirements intake process – think weekly or even daily!

Innovation can mean many things depending on context and the lenses your organization chooses to utilize. Depending on whether you are a products (many type of products from internet to consumer to packaged goods such as cookies) or a services organization,innovation could be viewed as many things.

While money or capital is needed, it can sometimes create more problems than solving them. Capital for a lot of companies means large teams and incredible effort managing egos, personalities, alignment, keeping a high signal-noise ratio going - after some time it can be easy to forget why one started. Before you realize it, the dashboard-crowd takes over and there are armies of Program Managers engaged in marking Red, Green, Yellow etc. I know of companies who could have literally put a Cloud Data Center on the moon for the amount they spent on not- so-successful programs. Keeping it true to the now famous "Two Pizza Box" guideline is the way to do it.

Instead, Ideation + Passion + Focus is a great way to do it. It takes a different kind of a DNA to ideate and innovate. There are team members who are brilliant at operations and execution and typically they are not the ones who innovate (but often do Business Process Innovation, which is a step in the right direction). You need "Believers," more "Can-Do" versus "Cannot-Do" people.  I recommend developing the ideas with passionate people and getting them focused on key decisions and strategies to solve for something real.

Secondly, innovation is not just great ideas percolating in a vacuum. They have to be made real. How do you get these ideas? You can't just walk into an office and ask people to step away from their day-job and come up with "Top-10" things that will move the needle.(Well, actually you can and yours truly has tried it in a few places, but...), it takes a lot more than that. It takes teamwork and agile teams who have a bias towards taking action. Especially in existing line of businesses, it is not always easy for just one visionary to brilliantly come up with the proverbial "killer-app." The right kind of team structure compliments and supports each other, filling in gaps and helping shape ideas and concepts into more something more meaningful and concrete.

The best innovation programs have a bias towards commercialization and revenue growth - essentially "moving the needle" - sometimes by brilliant product and/or service innovation, or brilliant business innovation models.

How will your organization innovate?

Ron Batra brings 25+ years of leadership across different industry verticals covering most aspects of Enterprise Software, Infrastructure, Multi-Cloud Architectures and Networking in some of the most world’s most respected corporations and brands, from startups to Fortune 10.  

Currently at Equinix, he is an Innovation Fellow/Senior Director of Technology Innovation and Strategy. His role entails shaping company strategy and advising the Senior Executive team in IOT, Big Data and Multi-Cloud architectures focus areas. Prior to Equinix, Mr. Batra was hired by AT&T to co-found and startup their Public Cloud Program.  

Follow Ron on Twitter: @ronbatra